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What are we up to? Updates on our research projects

This blog is written by Dr James Rees, the former Director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership.

We are really proud of our involvement in a range of external projects with a number of key partners, funded by a diverse range of sources. Although these don't, at first glance, look as if they focus on leadership, they add to a broader portfolio of research happening in CVSL and indeed in the wider OU community. And in fact, they provide an opportunity to include a focus on leaders and leadership in a very diverse range of contexts. This enhances the scope of the research and enhances the research culture of the centre – for instance through supporting new staff. Furthermore, they complement existing research projects that do focus on understanding leadership and collaboration in the voluntary sector - we will blog again about these soon!

The value of small: evidencing the distinctive contribution of small and medium sized charities (funded by Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales)

The overarching aim of the research is to provide new evidence about the contribution made by small and medium-sized charities operating at a local level. We are aiming to evidence whether locally-based small and medium-sized charities play a distinctive role in tackling disadvantage, and whether these distinctive features are recognised by the people who use their services.

The project fieldwork began in June 2017 and focuses on four different case study areas in England and Wales. CVSL is leading on research in one of these areas, and this involves intensive qualitative research interviewing a wider range of ‘stakeholders’ in order to understand how the local ‘ecosystem’ of VSOs works and in particular how it interacts with the local public sector. Finally, we consider the pros and cons of different funding mechanisms.

We have recently selected four case study organisations for further study, and are developing with them a narrative approach that aims to understand how they have changed over time, as well as exploring with them how social value is created and evidenced. We are also very interested in how a range of stakeholders including service users, volunteers, and the wider community perceive the value of the organisation.

The project is led by CRESR at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) in collaboration with the Institute for Voluntary Action Research. Most of the fieldwork will be completed by the autumn of 2017 and the project will report to LBFEW in early 2018.

Investigating the contribution of the voluntary sector to mental health crisis care in England (funded by NIHR)

In collaboration with the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC), and Suresearch, this study aims to provide a national overview of the range of crisis support offered by the voluntary sector; explore stakeholder views of the relative strengths and weaknesses of different types of voluntary sector crisis services and make recommendations as to what needs to happen for the NHS and local authorities to improve how they work with voluntary sector crisis services to ensure that people in a mental health crisis can get the right help at the right time.

The project began in the spring of 2017 with a national online survey of organisations involved in the provision of mental health crisis support, which has proven very successful in identifying the range and scope of services being delivered. We have also accessed a range of quantitative secondary data to better understand the national picture, as well as drawing on the Crisis Care Concordat data on provision across the whole of England. Starting in the summer we interviewed a wide range of national stakeholders from clinical experts in mental health, national campaigning and umbrella bodies, NHS England specialists, key high-profile charities, to local experts with experience of working at the grass roots and with community provision.

The project has a website 

EU3Leader: Fostering a new European profession – the Entrepreneurial Third Sector Leader (funded by Erasmus+)

CVSL is a ‘Knowledge Partner’ in this multi-partner European network project coordinated by Euclid. The project is focused on helping to facilitate the transformation from management to leadership within the third sector across Europe, in the conviction that this transformation is key to addressing emerging future opportunities for the Third Sector at a strategic level.

The project aims to help Third Sector management build capacity to detect, address and exploit emerging opportunities for Third Sector organisations, through strong strategic leadership. As the project is expected to contribute considerably to the European knowledge base in the Third Sector, and impact on policy and research in the field of Third Sector innovation it also focuses on how to integrate capacity building in existing or newly constructed training provision.

The project began with a multi-partner meeting in London in March 2017, and CVSL have been leading on a significant portion of the knowledge base for the project, developing an overarching ‘state of the art’ report on entrepreneurial leadership, as well as a survey of leadership development provisions and qualifications across the EU28 countries. This and innovative contributions that could be made to online leadership development by the OU more generally will be presented at the next partner meeting in Barcelona in late September 2017.

Another key feature of the project is that each partner convenes a group of knowledge fellows drawn from voluntary sector organisations – and CVSL has drawn on its wider networks and particularly the Leadership Panel to recruit managers and leaders interested in taking part in the project. Two participants attend each of the partner meetings in the partner countries (Spain, Belgium, Austria, Croatia and the UK). The project will run until early 2019.

Tracking Transforming Rehabilitation Probation reforms, funded by Clinks

The project is a collaboration between Clinks, NCVO, TSRC, and CVSL to track the reforms being carried out within the field of probation – commonly known as ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ – by surveying the members of Clinks and NCVO at three points between 2015, 2016 and 2017. Open University has acted as an independent academic partner ensuring that the project strives for neutrality and the methods are robust, and contributing academic rigour to the analysis and reporting. CVSL works closely with TSRC and Clinks on designing the survey questions, carrying out the data analysis from those surveys, and advising on final reports. In 2017 we built on this series of surveys by carrying out some qualitative case study research in order to explore some of the issues arising from the survey in more detail.

CVSL carried out a series of interviews with a group of organisations selected by the partners in May-July 2017. From this, we have created a series of short case studies highlighting key insights from the cases in relation to their experience of the very far-reaching reforms in this area, which will form a key part of the final report to be published in November 2017 at the Clinks AGM.

13th September 2017

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