My 2nd question today! I set up a small volunteer community advocacy self-help group about 3 years ago and we have always worked closely with our local authority. We are the only established charity registered BME-led community group. As such, the local authority seems to always want to use us for their involvement activities and then say they have consulted with BME communities. We thnik that's unfair as we don't have the capacity as a volunteer group to collate all the views of majority within this community. Also, the council have so far refused to fund us adequately enough as they have only given us less than 10% of the funding we requested in the last two years for a outreach development worker post (part-time). Would it be right to start charging the council (and the other service delivery agencies that want to access our clients/users) for our time spent in supporting them to acheive their own strategic aims and CPA (Comprehensive Performance Assessment) objectives? We feel they are using us on the cheap!
