WCVA’s Health and Care Project Officer, David Cook, recaps some key points about why the work of the sector in the health and care sphere is so important.
At WCVA’s gofod3 event at the beginning of summer, the Health and Care Project held two different sessions. These tied in with the Helpforce Cymru and Bevan Commission paper on voluntary sector collaboration with the statutory sector to deliver health and care in Wales. Since then, we’ve launched a companion paper on why the voluntary sector matters to health and care in Wales, (spoiler – it matters a lot). Much discussion has been held since the publication of these two different papers, highlighting the vital role the voluntary sector plays in the health and care ecology in Wales.
A LONG VIEW & WIDE VIEW
The discussions were wide-ranging. Particular highlights included the need for a ‘long’ view and a ‘wide’ view of sector health and care services. The long view might include longer-term thinking about concerns around the trajectory of health services (an increase in demand coinciding with a reduction in resources), while a wide view might concern itself with social determinants of health (e.g. poverty, education, etc) rather than actual outcomes of health and care services. The voluntary sector, with its diversity and richness of organisations bound by common values, is well placed to affect these social determinants and must be involved in conversations and services around them.
The need to better involve communities in decisions about them was a key topic.
This could include:
- Bringing community voices to planning, and using these voices to create a map of community assets (including physical facilities, skills and experience) in the area, with a role for CVC support
- Using asset-based development to identify and build on local strengths
- Nurturing greater trust between voluntary sector organisations to help identify opportunities for collaboration – e.g. networking, joint funding bids
- Nurturing greater cross-sector collaboration to enable better and more fruitful community action
CHALLENGE POWER, CHANGE CULTURE
Elsewhere, the group discussion also touched on the need for the voluntary sector to be able to challenge power to change culture, with the need to be able to raise the sector’s voice collaboratively highlighted as key. That some voluntary sector organisations administer funds as well as receiving them was noted as a potential point of conflict – harkening back to the earlier point about trust.
Finally, an interesting discussion around impact measurement raised some interesting questions, how can we measure communities becoming more resourceful? What principles can be replicated from one experience to another? And what opportunities are there for collective measurements, e.g. measurements that could be shared across all Wales’ CVCs? Effective measurement allows the sector to explain exactly what it does and why it matters, as well as increasing the confidence of decision-makers – and, crucially, our communities – about the sector’s ability to improve health and wellbeing all across the country.
We will be looking at ways in which WCVA might address some of the challenges and the recommendations outlined in the paper in the next phase of our project.
CONTACT US
We would be delighted to hear your ideas about where we could make a positive difference. To do that, contact us at healthandcare@wcva.cymru.