Agenda item

To consider the draft strategy, to assess its ambition and how it will drive service improvement.

Mark Lygo, Cabinet Member for Public Health and Equalities introduced the report. The Council recognised the value of the voluntary and community sector, contributing to society in ways that local government could not. During the pandemic public involvement in volunteering had increased substantially. This has included a new level of engagement and collaboration with the statutory sector. There is considerable ambition within the VCS to retain this new culture to drive efficiency, flexibility, and responsiveness. The Council, likewise, wished to build, develop and foster these relationships and outcomes. The embryo for this strategy was from an LGA peer review in 2019, with work continuing to develop the strategy from then on. In September 2021 the Cabinet approved the development of a VCS strategy, to be co-produced with the sector. The aim was to consider the Council’s commitment to the sector, and analyse and align relationships and funding – to create a clear and cohesive strategic approach across Oxfordshire as a whole.

Co-production and engagement had been central to the development of the strategy, with the Council going above and beyond what would be expected to garner the views of communities across the county. The Council had also directly engaged the district councils in the county, and via them parish councils also.  Five priorities and a number of underpinning commitments were agreed through a VCS and public sector co-production working group, based on the input from an externally-held workshop. The priorities were:

(a) Collaboration and Networking

(b) Volunteering and Social Action

(c) Capacity and Skills

(d) Supporting a Sustainable Sector

(e) Reducing Inequalities

The Council aimed to continue to promote and champion the VCS, strengthen partnership working, work collaboratively with the VCS to address long-term challenges, promote the value of social action and volunteering, upskill volunteers and address barriers to volunteering, help with VCS with access to and understanding of data about local communities, and tackle inequalities, including digital exclusion. 

In response to the presentation the Committee queried the degree to which the strategy tended towards working with larger voluntary and community sector organisations, and whether harder to reach groups, and particularly the views of younger people had been sufficiently heard. A number of explanations and caveats were put forward in relation to this, including the fact that the strategy’s purpose was to develop the capacity of the sector overall, and not one element of it, that pragmatically it was necessary to work with those with greatest capacity to develop the sector and that they tended to have the spare capacity to contribute to strategic discussions, that notwithstanding the previous point smaller groups (and indeed individuals) had been involved in the consultation, and young people had been involved. The Committee determined that they should still raise this issue as a recommendation.

The other key area of discussion concerned the apparent prioritisation of adult services over those of children and young people within the strategy. Given that the Committee considered that many of the capacity challenges and workforce recruitment and retention issues across the sectors were similar, that an equivalence of priority was merited. With regards to spending on commissioned services, it was noted by the Committee that spending on adults was six and a half times that of children and young people. A number of points were made in response to this, including the fact that the strategy itself was one which was designed to support the entire sector, rather than specific elements within it. It was neither for adults nor for children. As part of the consultation, Children’s Services had expressed no concerns. The spending on commissioned services, though technically accurate, without context around understanding the size of the different cohorts and the proportion of services commissioned to the voluntary sector gave a misleading impression. The Committee noted that if this were the case, the Council ought to look further into the differences in approach to ensure opportunities were not being missed, and that that if members had picked up that there was a preference for adults over children within the strategy, members of the general public might do so also if left unamended.

The following action was AGREED:

1)    That the Scrutiny Officer would draft recommendations based on the discussion for sign-off by the Chair and vice-Chair relating to consultation with businesses, and joint-working with other local authorities on an app, and that the Committee would sign off any forthcoming report remotely.

NB The recommendations ultimately agreed were as follows:

Recommendation 1: That the Council undertakes specific additional consultation with smaller voluntary sector groups to ensure its proposals support their needs also.

Recommendation 2: That the Council uses the forthcoming work by the consultation and engagement team to seek informed views on children and young people on the draft voluntary sector strategy.

Recommendation 3: That the Council assures itself that the draft strategy does not deprioritise the needs of younger people over older people.

Recommendation 4: That the Council investigates the reasons behind the difference in spending on commissioned services for adults and young people and investigates whether the difference in approach means opportunities for better services or value for money are being missed.

Recommendation 5: That the Council amends its draft strategy to prevent the impression being given that the needs of children and young people are of lesser priority than older people.