Not just a rainy day

'Not just a rainy day.......but total climate change'

This is how Kevin Carey, Chair of RNIB recently described the coming change to the environment in which charities like Mayday Trust now operate. A shrinking public sector, huge pressures on the public purse, welfare reform, slow economic growth, unemployment, cuts in benefits, cuts in funding, the bedroom tax, the charity tax....I could go on and every week it seems more keeps being added to the list of doom. As a nation we are only just starting to see the real impact of all this.

Is this 'climate change' such a bad thing? Yes and no. The process might be painful but could the end result be a better world? Surely we have to make it so? I don’t always agree with what is happening out there but I also know we need to choose our battles carefully.

Certainly in the world of supported housing, it felt like we had all been hypnotised by the Supporting People programme. So focused on its outcomes and outputs and all the compliance that goes with it, perhaps as a sector we had lost sight of why and for whom we really exist. Yes, the SP programme raised quality, prioritised minority groups and commissioned new services but I also think it made us blinkered, lazy and far too comfortable.

Well at Mayday we are wide-awake to the challenges facing us, both in securing new funding and in meeting the needs of increasing numbers of people who need our services and interventions.

It's going to be tough but this is our year of collaboration. We are already working across sectors talking with a number of prisons on delivering services to reduce re-offending. We are also working with Unipart and Foyer Federation on a special motor industry Working Assets project. We are delivering personalised services for the NHS in Northamptonshire. We are offering day activities to replace traditional day centres in Warwickshire. We have won funding fromThe Rank Foundation to develop leadership skills in some of our young people together with Chance 4 Change. We are even working with agencies who were/are our competitors - whoa now...scary stuff!

We are doing things differently.

Collaboration and co-creation are the new buzz words of our times. Actually I quite like those words. It's different to partnerships – a word I and many others overuse and often overstate. It's more than a formal agreement, it's about coming together to create something that is unique and that makes a difference to real people. We must realise we can’t do it alone – we need collaboration between public, private and third sector organisations. There’s a lot we can learn from each other. And it’s an opportunity to leave our organisational egos at the door - now there's a challenge for the sector!

No doubt some of these new collaborations will be harder work. Organisations have distinct cultures and bringing those together in co-creating and delivering new services will be a challenge. But we have to accept that the world has and is changing – do you want to be part of this new world? I do!

Caroline Downs, CEO of the Local Government Association said this about future commissioning and service provision - 'Not just less for less…but something completely different'