The ‘Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership’ is a newly formed service aiming to provide support to grassroots and local organisations. 

During the COVID-19 crisis, organisations are providing outstanding support to their communities. When they need help to provide this support, they can approach their local council for voluntary service, local authorities, local infrastructure bodies or local resilience forums. 

However, when there is not enough capacity at local level, organisations can make a request to the VCSEP for extra support. 

These requests will be reviewed by your ‘Local Liaison Leads’ who will aim to organise help locally or escalate the request to a regional panel to find more appropriate support.

Liaison leads are members of the Community and Voluntary Sector and often leaders in their own local organisations. Most, but not all liaison leads are also members of NAVCA. They have extensive experience of activities, groups and needs in their local areas and in this role are acting as the point of contact between local and regional levels.

As part of the online ‘Get help as a local organisation’ service, they will be linking local organisations with local or regional responses of support.

In Lancashire, we have two ‘Liaison Leads’: our Chief Officer Naz Zaman, alongside Community CVS’ Garth Hodgkinson.

To request support, organisations can follow the directions via the VCSEP website, or alternatively, they can contact one of the Liaison Leads directly, who will pass on the request to the relevant people.

To contact your ‘Liaison Leads’, click the email addresses below.

Naz Zaman: naz.zaman@lancashirebmenetwork.org.uk

Garth Hodgkinson: garth.hodgkinson@communitycvs.org.uk

For more information, click the link here.