Dear Colleagues,
The Microsoft outage on Friday 13th really impacted people across the globe and forced us to look at work in a different way. We continued with our face-to-face work, and staff were on the phone as the first port of call. People still have wants and needs whether the internet is there or not.
Working in the VCSEF sector can mean that staff and volunteers are seeing people with complex, deep-rooted challenges every day. It takes persistence, skill, and genuine collaboration to ensure the people in our communities do not fall through the gaps.
This week I attended a workshop about the Changing Futures Programme. It is designed to transform how local services support adults experiencing multiple disadvantages, specifically overlapping challenges such as homelessness, substance misuse, mental ill health, domestic abuse, and contact with the criminal justice system.
Rather than treating these issues in isolation, the programme is built to achieve lasting change across three connected levels:
- For individuals: Providing flexible, trauma-informed support to help people stabilise their lives and regain control.
- For local services: Encouraging closer integration across health, housing, justice, and voluntary organisations so people receive joined-up, person-centred care rather than hitting crisis points.
- For the wider system: Building stronger multi-agency partnerships and using shared learning to influence how services are commissioned and funded in the future.
Our role within the VCSEF sector is vital to making this work. By bringing community insight and lived experience, we can help to build a system that responds to people’s real needs, rather than forcing them to go through different and fragmented services. Let’s see how the programme develops and is rolled out.
Talking of lived experience, remember, it’s the final countdown now to our milestone event and we would love to see you there:
WVCA Celebration: 20 Years of SUIT and 10 years of Social Prescribing
10.30-3 on Friday 20th November 2026 at the Arena Theatre
Our Service User Involvement Team (SUIT) drug and alcohol recovery project was established in 2006 and our Social Prescribing service was established in 2016. We are going to be celebrating our fantastic projects, SUIT and Social Prescribing and their incredible work.
If there are any issues that you would like to raise or anything that you would like to hear more about, please contact me.
If you would like more information, please remember to check out our website and newsletter regularly – there is always new information, and opportunities are always presenting themselves.
Thank you
Sharon Nanan-Sen
Chief Executive Officer