Report of Chief Officer
2005/2006 was another year of progress and uncertainty for Maldon Mind.
Service Level Agreements
Our total statutory income grew and we completed several Service Level Agreements (SLAs - the contracts we have with our funders) after several years of having to rely on old SLAs, some many years old. Unfortunately because of the uncertainties around the future Commissioning arrangements due to NHS reorganisation, most of these are for only 1 year or 18 months. These new SLAs however, jointly agreed with the Commissioners after many hours of constructive discussion and negotiation, do provide good models for what we hope will be 3 or 5 year agreements once the future commissioning arrangements are resolved again!
Funding Issues
A difficulty which is again rearing its ugly head is delays in receiving agreed funding from some of the Statutory bodies because of their financial problems. These are covered in the individual Project Reports in our Annual Review, but to give you an idea of this, the half year funding for the CRESS project from April to September has still not been received from Essex County at the time of this report being written in September. This obviously has great implications for our cash flow but also for our overall income, since our investment strategy is to keep balances in our high interest CAF account until needed - no balance, no interest!
BroSis has developed with minimal Statutory funding, but grant giving bodies do like new schemes and we must work even harder to ensure its stability as an established Project.
The main health funding for our Projects is from adult mental health services and as already mentioned, the
ECC older peoples mental health budget is ‘under siege’. This means that schemes such as Solo and CheeRing, which are mainly funded by Primary Care Trusts are facing uncertainty because of the PCT reorganization in North Essex but they cannot look to the main mental health budget or ECC.
The General Charity has been successful in winning much needed income from grant giving Trusts. As I have commented before, this is a difficult task because although the pressures on the administrative and governance infrastructure of charities increases each year, obviously funders still want to give their money to the ‘sharp end’: so this proportion remains small.
Partnership Working
The voluntary sector has major concerns that the current government’s policies, although promoting the sectors role, are reintroducing strong elements of competition to health and social care commissioning, which could affect smaller and local voluntary bodies. Our response to this has been to increase our partnership working, including formalizing the collaborative working agreement between the Minds in Essex, and this has already enabled us to win a new grant to market our services jointly.
Maldon (Essex) Mind remains a strong and thriving organisation and our staff, volunteers and
Trustees remain as committed and hardworking as ever despite the uncertainties and I pay tribute to them. Our working relationship with Commissioners and statutory partners is sound and our reputation for delivering excellent services is better than ever. Our purpose is to meet mental health need, to raise the profile of mental health and to fight stigma in Essex and we continue to do a great job.
Long may we continue to do so!
May I add my personal thanks to our ever-patient Administrative Officer Shirley Douce who has become an invaluable part of the Maldon Mind team. There is a tremendous variety and amount of work which is carried out through our “General Office” and Shirley’s quick brain and attention to detail helps everybody in the organisation - not just me!
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