As a Targeted Support Fund area Wigan has received resources from Independent Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) to help develop its Commissioning Improvement Plan which is being delivered locally by a partnership group consisting of Wigan & Leigh CVS and local authority staff.  A key element of the plan was to have a conference whereby VCS organisations could increase their understanding on personalisation, hear from commissioners themselves on what people have been saying are their priorities and how they will work with the voluntary sector.

The ‘Commissioning – Cuts – Personalisation....ARE YOU READY?’ conference was held on the 14^th October at Leigh Sports Village attended by over 60 people from organisations across the Borough.

Chaired by John Hannen (GMCVO) the audience enjoyed keynote speeches from Alex Whinnom (GMCVO), Pamela Ball (Chief Officer CVS) and Cllr Keith Cunliffe who helped set the local context and political scene whilst Sally Hobbs and Liv Bickerstaffe (Wigan Council) gave informative presentations on personalisation, commissioning intentions and the customer journey.  Presentations from Mick Taylor (Wigan and Leigh CVS) and John Parker (The Brick) demonstrated how VCS organisations have adapted to meet the challenges.

A series of workshops allowed participants to reflect on the key messages and to start to plan how their organisation may need to adapt to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Feedback from the event has been excellent and is already being used to plan future training and support. 

For those of you who completed feedback sheets all of you said that the day had met your objectives and everyone found the event useful although some of you thought the day was too long and a lot to take in and do.  Several people suggested themed shorter sessions maybe at lunchtimes on other areas where you wanted more information including the cuts, personalisation, GP consortia, the PCT and the future.

Other themes included:

• Help with Business planning, marketing, collaboration and or partnerships and all the questions around these with a common theme that organisations need to change, work better together or many won't survive.
• Structured networking/regular voluntary sector meetings
• Mentoring / buddying with other organisations
• Access to information on the training available
• Ways of helping people know who does what in the Borough
• Regular communications to enable partnership opportunities

Many of you were concerned about the stress within organisations and how this will affect residents of the Borough as times get tougher

The event proved to be an excellent model of how partnership working can help achieve common goals our thanks go to all the presenters, the facilitators and Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations for their assistance in organising the event.

• 2010 are you ready - Alex Whinnom - GMCVO
• Greater Manchester Health and Well Being Consortium
• Personalisation - The Customer Journey part1
• Personalisation - New markets part 2
• The Brick by John Parker
• Final Report