Jonathan Midwood, Business Growth Manager – acis group
acisgroup.co.uk
On a wind-pressed morning in Lincolnshire, the village hall lights flicker on before the sun has properly risen. Pat arrives first, as she always does, keys jangling like a small bell of defiance. She runs a volunteer-led café out of the hall — tea, toast, quiet conversations — the kind that doesn’t appear in performance frameworks but keeps people standing upright. A valuable and very needed dose of human connection.
Outside, the fields of Lincolnshire looks unchanged. Inside the VCSFE sector, everything is shifting.
The noticeboard tells the story before the kettle boils: services due to funding “paused,” no new contracts “recommissioned,” a new NHS acronym pinned over the old one. Somewhere between county hall restructures and yet another health system redraw, Pat’s café is in danger of slipping into the margins — still essential, just harder to describe in the language of outcomes and deliverables needed by new funders and LA’s. Pat delivers something difficult to capture in word, KPI’s and numbers.
Later, another service advisor sets up at a folding table, laptop balanced on a stack of leaflets. Her role used to be funded for three years at a time, supporting the community. Now with six months, maybe less, there is a danger that the service may not be funded again. The advisor talks quietly to a man who has worked the land his whole life and cannot navigate an online system that has no place for analogue lives.
By lunchtime, the hall is warm with voices. Volunteers laugh. Problems remain unsolved but shared. This is the hidden and valuable services of Lincolnshire: resilient, threadbare, delivering but also, if possible quietly adapting to a changing landscape.
As councils rebalance and the NHS redraws its map, the VCSFE sector bends instead of breaking — holding space, knitting gaps, sustaining hope with borrowed time and donated biscuits.
When Pat locks up at dusk, she pins a new flyer to the board. “Still here,” it reads — less an announcement more of a promise.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter Be the first in the know!
We promise to not use your email for spam and we will not sell it to third parties. We will not bother you with useless information, nor will we bombard you! By signing up for our newsletter you also agree to our Privacy Policy.
