Thanks to the people who could make it to the Challenges and Opportunities meeting we held in Sleaford on the 10^th March. Whilst we may not be that much clearer on where we go from here or where other partner organisations are heading we did have some valuable conversations on what the uncertainty might mean for VCFSE organisations in the short, medium and long term.

If you weren’t able to make it don’t worry – there will be more opportunities to come together, in person, through the year to talk and share your thoughts on the challenges you all face and the opportunities that perhaps present themselves. We will share these with you and we do hope you can join us. 

Paul’s immediate personal reflection was shared on LinkedIn after the meeting, however whilst we were still in the room, LVET committed to continue creating ‘spaces’ for conversation as well as improving the way we share what we do find out, when we find out anything, with members. One way of doing this is through ‘Briefing Papers’ summarising key things we feel are of importance. We will find a way to share these papers – either through the weekly update or by creating an ‘online space’ where you will be able to find the things we share as well as where you can add content or questions too – because we know you can’t always ‘be in the room’ when we have conversations. Any documents we mentioned will also be added to the ‘Strategies Whiteboard’ which can be found on the member resources page of the website.  For now, these are some briefing papers that may be of interest:

• • A statement of what VCFSE organisations do
  • Changes in commissioning responsibilities
  • Overview of ICB Strategies
  • Accessing existing data profiles

You asked that we continue to be your champion, a role we are very pleased to take on and we think there is also something we can do to help each of you to be champions for each other as well as to find better ways to feed back to you all – to be the conduit between you, our members, and our statutory partners, commissioners and funders.

You also shared with us that you would like to ‘get round the table’ with the ICB and other commissioners and decision makers. We have already begun a conversation with one commissioner around how we create a safe and trusting space where we can all meet and share our ‘realities’ and think together about how best to support the social care, health and wellbeing of communities. We are also excited to share that we are inviting contributions from members, partners and others to a collection of writings that capture the feelings, fears and hopes of people working to support wellbeing, health and social care in Lincolnshire in this period of significant change. Where do we go from here?  will bring together ideas from across ‘the system’, and make them widely available, in the hope that they will stimulate collaborative thinking and bring people together with shared ideas or outlooks and help to create a new direction for the way we do things in Lincolnshire. Look out for the invitation coming shortly.

We will continue to reflect on the conversations and think about how we take on some of the challenges around workforce, around visibility and around shaping our own future. The slides from the session are available to download here though be aware that thing smay already have changed since we got together.