Helping organisations to move forward…..

A mental health organisation in the region recently received grant money to employ someone to carry out a ‘health check’ on their organisation and produce a Business Plan. As a consultant with the Trust I have been working with the organisation for the last couple of months. My budget is 12 days and I have so far completed the fieldwork and the Business plan is in its early stages.

The organisation has recently acquired a large building (using Lottery and Council funds) from which it runs an open door drop in and provides a base for a volunteer organiser and a befriending service. A counsellor works from another building 5 minutes drive away. They receive only 10% of their funds from a county partnership and the rest has all been raised from charitable Trusts, SRB and ESF. The new building provides wonderful opportunities but it is also a considerable threat as staffing and financial structures and overall management arrangements are currently not sufficiently robust to make sure this resource is being used effectively and efficiently. In addition the open door policy brings with it specific risks which need to be rigorously assessed.

My field work to date has involved extensive interviews with all 5 staff (of whom only one is full time), individual Trustees, key stakeholders and a two hour session with users in the drop in and a group discussion with half of the Trustees. My major concern at present is to ensure the users are really involved and the Trustees take full ownership of the issues identified and play an active part in the business planning process. It is also vital to ensure that all involved recognise the necessity of consolidation and stop chasing funds through specific initiatives, which are not necessarily planned. The Business Plan therefore identifies very basic issues within the organisation, which need to be addressed, and how these will be tackled.

Support from the national body involved with the organisation has been relatively weak and little appears to be available on good practice, policies and procedures.

We would be keen to hear any examples you may have of best practice in this area or partnership opportunities with similar organisations in the south west.

Philippa Chapman is a consultant with The Evaluation Trust. Find out about the Evaluation Trust and the people working for the trust. Alternatively, continue reading about the current work of the Evaluation Trust