Wandsworth Care Alliance

Farewell to our VSCS Manager, Julie Bristow

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We wanted to let you know that Julie Bristow, the Voluntary Sector Coordination Service Manager, who has run the VSCS since it started in 2020 is leaving WCA this week. 

Julie said: “I want to thank all the organisations within the voluntary and community sector for the support and engagement you have had with the VSCS over the last four years.  It has been a really enjoyable and rewarding experience working with and alongside you all and witnessing first-hand the incredible contribution you have made, and continue to make, to Wandsworth and its residents.  I am sure you will go from strength to strength and rest assured that the Voluntary Sector Coordination Service will continue to inform, connect and support you as you go forward into 2024.”

Free training and development round up

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We share upcoming opportunities for the voluntary sector to connect and upskill for free.

Skills for collaboration

This free lunch time webinar delivered by PCC will explore:

  • What is collaboration?
  • An overview of the interpersonal skills needed for collaborative working to thrive.
  • The benefits of collaborative working 

Book here for the 60-minute free workshop:

Communicating Impact

Dunhill Medical Trust is partnering with the team at Moore Kingston Smith Non-Profit Advisory and the University of Birmingham’s School of Social Policy to deliver high quality training. The programme is aimed particularly at community-facing organisations working to support older people to thrive in safe, healthy, and well-connected homes and communities.

Their first free webinar – which will be on Impact – will take place on November 28th. This webinar will be run by Karl Leathem, from Moore Kingston Smith Non-Profit Advisory who has worked with hundreds of community-facing organisations over twenty-five years, assisting them with evaluating and communicating social impact.

For more information click here. Or email sarah.allport@dunhillmedical.org.uk to book a place.

How to get press coverage

On Thursday 23rd November, the council are hosting a ‘How to get press coverage’ for your business (organisation) event at Tooting Works, with journalist Rebecca Burn-Callander former enterprise editor of the Daily Telegraph. The link to book is here.

Skills and Employment Practitioners’ Share Best Practice

The South London Skills & Employment Community of Practice meet to share best practice with quarterly one hour sessions online. Aims are:

  • Help strengthen the understanding of the skills and employment support available in South London.
  • Identify funding opportunities and support consortium applications to bring more funding into the sub-region.
  • Upskill yourselves and others through sharing of best practice.

Who’s invited?

Anyone delivering programmes or hoping to connect with skills and employment practitioners across South London. Including adult education providers, community based practitioners & VCS representatives, JCPs, employment support providers, external signposting organisations, social prescribers, borough employment practitioners and training providers.

27th November 2-3pm

Click to register your interest, or find out further information, please contact admin@southlondonpartnership.co.uk.

Inclusive family financial education

free funded workshops for practitioners to help children and families learn about money. The training is delivered by the Campaign for Learning and is funded by the Money and Pensions Service.

No specialist knowledge is needed to attend any workshop running up to 12 December 2023 

Help older homeowners to improve their homes

free webinar 30th November – open the flyer

Mental health awareness training

Ongoing training from MHFA England – find courses

Safeguarding

SWL ICB free Lunch and learn sessions for Adult safeguarding awareness week.

Monday, 20 Nov, 12:00-13:30: What’s My Role in Safeguarding Adults? Registration

Tuesday, 21 Nov, 12:00-13:00: Organisations Working Together: Community Safety: Registration

Wandsworth Safeguarding Children Partnership events

  1. Intra-familial Child Sexual Abuse (Friday 24 November 2023 at 9:30am – 5:00pm)
  1. Threshold Document Workshop (Thursday 30 November 2023 at 10:00am – 12:00pm)
  1. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Breast Flattening / Ironing (Thursday 30 November 2023 at 10:00am – 11:30am)

7.    Forced Marriage Case Review and Lived Experience (Monday 4 December 2023 at 10:00am – 11:30am)

Enhancing the welfare advice offer

This online workshop is for organisations who offer welfare advice. The session is delivered by the SWL & St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. The purpose is to understand the best way to enhance the welfare advice offer for Wandsworth service users.

29th November 3pm-4pm

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 337 618 404 327
Passcode: JeRbsC

Download Teams | Join on the web

What is Kooth? The free mental health service for young people

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What is Kooth? 4 young people sat against a red background holding paper speech bubbles over their faces

What is Kooth?

Kooth is a free, safe, anonymous online mental health service for young people that is accessible 24/7, 365 days of the year and provides access to chat sessions with BACP-accredited counsellors and qualified emotional wellbeing practitioners.

All our chat sessions are text-based conversations that take place on the Kooth website, and last up to an hour. Chat is available from 12pm – 10pm Monday through Friday, and 6pm – 10pm Saturday and Sunday, providing a much needed ‘out of hours’ service.

Kooth is accessible from any device.

koothplc.com

Are you able to see all content on the site?

There are restrictions in place to ensure that when using Kooth, you only see what is age appropriate for you. This also helps us to ensure you find the content that is most useful to you.

Any comments are pre-moderated to ensure that only relevant comments are posted and visible.

Can you create content on Kooth?

You can submit content and post on the discussion boards to share your experiences and to support others within the Kooth community.

We also encourage you to give us feedback by sharing your views of how we deliver our service.

This will help us to keep improving Kooth.

Can you message other young people on Kooth?

The safety of our users on Kooth is really important to us.

Therefore, you cannot add friends or directly message other young people on the site in the same way you can on gaming platforms or social media sites.

This is because we are an anonymous service and we need to make sure everyone using the site is safe.

When can you talk to someone?

The Kooth team are available to chat 7 days a week, 365* days of the year. You can access the magazine, discussion boards and any other online content whenever you like, from wherever you are.

Our friendly online team are available to chat during the following times:

From 12 noon until 10pm weekdays.

From 6pm until 10pm weekends.

To make sure we can support as many of you as possible, we do have a chat queue.

How long you will have to wait in the chat queue depends on how busy the site is so please be patient with us.

You can send a message to the team at any time and it will be responded to during service working hours. Our counsellors are employed by us and are fully qualified with the BACP or equivalent.

Do you need to be referred by a GP?

You do not need to be referred to Kooth to access the service.

You are invited and welcome to join as long as you fall within the age of 10-25.

Share your Views on 19 Steps for Health and Wellbeing in Wandsworth

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People who live and work in Wandsworth are being invited to feedback on an updated strategic plan for how local organisations, including Wandsworth Council, the NHS, and voluntary and community sector partners, will meet local health and wellbeing needs over the next five years.

This feedback will help to ensure the actions in the final plan are the right ones to make a real difference. The plan will go into detail about how our 19 priority areas can be met in a way that most benefits local people, such as rethinking local services provided and commissioning new ones. 

Your health and wellbeing matters – read more about the plan and take the online survey by September 11th.

You only need to answer questions about the topics that matter most to you.

Take the survey

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