It’s recognised that this is a halfway-house process which is not yet full commissioning or procurement. For one thing, it does not really open up the “market” to the wider sector nor reflect a range of approaches suitable to smaller community groups.

Secondly, the time-scale is a compromise between the need to improve the process as much as possible but to do so with a sufficient period of notice for voluntary sector organisations to manage the staffing risks. This means getting everything settled in time for 1st January: it would be hugely wasteful if, having finally secured two year contracts, valuable staff were lost due to uncertainty in the first couple of months of 2009.

In addition to this we are:

• working with the central team to identify what kinds of support voluntary sector organisations may need to be able to respond to the process - and possibly delivering some of this support ourselves
• identifying that types of training and development the decision making panels may need to improve their knowledge and understanding of the voluntary sector - again possibly delivering some of this ourselves
• providing information about the process and its development: regularly updating the website, providing email bulletins and verbal updates at Child and Family Support Forum and Voluntary Youth Manchester meetings. We now have permission from the City Council to add the minutes of the investment subgroup meetings to the website - see Notes of Meetings on the right hand menu.