A new blog from our Partnership Manager Lynsey (pictured below) on the new Falkirk Third Sector Forums and Networks, launching September 2022.
Third sector representation in a post-COVID landscape
We are living through a time of many challenges – as individuals, as communities, and as parts of the groups and organisations we work with and represent. Austerity, budget cuts, over-subscribed funds, poverty, civil unrest around the globe causing mass displacement, the climate crisis: we had it all, and then we also had a pandemic worse than any other in living memory to face down. Working away in the bedroom that became my workspace for a while, I recall often feeling humbled at seeing sectors and communities communicating and working together in such a way that they seemed to collectively achieve the impossible at least once each day, and then wondering what would we have to do to keep all this good stuff when the pandemic was over, knowing that the impacts of this would worsen other challenges in our communities for a long time to come.
Certainly there was something in uniting against the common enemy of COVID, in a situation with such high stakes, that greased the wheels for true collaboration and partnership working. During this time staff and volunteers from the third sector took their seats at the table, where they were valued as equal partners in planning and decision-making spaces and in my role as Partnership Manager in a post-COVID landscape this is where I need to focus my attention: I believe that level of participation, collaboration and third sector seats at the table is the good stuff we have to keep.
With that in mind, and as COVID subsides, our relaunched CVS Falkirk Third Sector Forums and Networks return to a series of thematic meetings that reflect the needs of local communities and the sector, and soon each of the Forums and Networks will be asked to decide how they will be represented in local community planning spaces, through the recruitment of third sector representatives from each, beginning with the recruitment of a third sector rep for the Falkirk Integrated Joint Board (IJB). Our team have worked hard throughout the pandemic alongside many third sector colleagues so this is a change for us but I won’t say this is our “new normal” as I feel certain we are not there yet, and that the “new normal” is something we should shape and decide together with the sector.
Cullingworth and Escobar (2019) found that “There is strong democratic potential in the TSI (CVS Falkirk) being a facilitator and an enabler, rather than a representative” and I wholeheartedly agree, not least because there is no way that our team can replicate the wealth of skills, knowledge, local intelligence and specialisms within the third sector in Falkirk! This is why the role of the relaunched Forums and new third sector reps is so important for local third sector participation – the time is right to make sure the voice of the sector is heard loud and clear.
As facilitators and enablers we will support you as much as we need to, provide training, learning and mentoring opportunities as you find your feet in the new Forums or in your third sector rep role, provide capacity building support for your group or organisation, help you overcome any challenges you face – but we don’t want to take your seat and speak for you.
If you would like to join one or more of our new Forums, or if you’re already a Forum member and you’re interested in becoming a third sector rep, please contact Lynsey by email: lynsey.hansford@cvsfalkirk.org.uk
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