Highlights from roundtable

In addition to collecting information via the survey questions, a roundtable session was held to discuss issues around funding.  The following comments were made by organisations who have fundraised to deliver projects for children and young people with additional needs.

Core Costs –  Core funding and long-term funding is key for enabling organisations to plan meaningful delivery. Core underpins all projects and wider work. Long-term is at least 3 years, ideally 5. Scale of funding is a concern too. 

John Lyon’s Charity strategy 2023

Longer-term –  Long-term funding can make charities feel nervous often queries ‘will we still be delivering this same thing in 5 years?’ As a result organisations need flexibility around delivery for later years. The long-term core funding should come from Arts Council and trusts. LA funding for Arts is largely non-existent.  

New vs Legacy – Some funders want to support new projects every time but there is no need to reinvent the wheel every time, this is not helpful. Organisations need funding for existing provision. Sometimes it feels like they need to produce a “rabbit out of the hat” every year. 

Evaluation – Need resources to do good, strong evaluation so you can prove and demonstrate impact. Having simple reporting and evaluation processes is important, they lose a lot of time on preparing reports, each funder has a different format. Some uniformity would be helpful. Evaluation and reporting is intrinsically linked to funding. Need to report  quarterly for the Arts Council which is very time consuming (suggested this could put charities off from applying for grants). Not enough trained people and the cost of people who are available is really high.  

Data collection – Collecting info from participants can be hard, for example collecting info from kids who have been through trauma. Want to demonstrate impact but also need to be conscious of limitations. 

Development – Need some allocation for development within a project. Rarely have time or space to take a step back and think about where to go next. Need capacity and flexibility to reflect on learning, changing goals and outcomes. 

Training from top down to make sure the change really does happen, not just working within the learning team. Having funding to enable this organisational change to happen. Explicit expectation that a funded organisation is actively committed to the cultural change of structural inclusion, and funding enables this to happen (needs to be included in the budget – from a funder’s perspective, unless this is included, it won’t happen) 

Flexibility – very important when it comes to funding opportunities. Through discussion with Funders such as JLC, organisations were able to pivot their work to accommodate during a crisis scenario, for example the pandemic. As a result, able to adapt delivery to accommodate the new environment.  Nature of the work is unpredictable so it’s important to be flexible with young people with SEN to accommodate and adapt to their needs.  

Advocacy – continually having to justify why it’s important to support advocacy, when the need is clear. Advocacy up the food chain – taking it to the government to get national support. Need to lift the sector and look at the intangibles as to how the work is seen and valued.  

Risk – Funders can invest in innovation where LAs might be more risk averse