Royal support for inter-sector talent sharing scheme
March 2011
When Samantha Tennakoon started her Civil Service career as an operations manager in a tax credit call centre at HM Revenue & Customs she never imagined that she would be, as part of her professional development, sitting down with a social housing tenant over a cup of tea,
and finding out what it was like to be on the receiving end of government policy. Neither did she foresee she would be using her call centre experience to help Notting Hill Housing Trust with its strategy review process, responding to some of the challenges thrown up by the comprehensive spending review.
RIP Sir Humphrey
Sam is just one of many young ‘fast stream’ civil servants who leave their respective government departments to bring some fresh perspective and thinking to charities under the placement scheme set up by Charity Next, part of the Prince’s Charities Foundation. The charity has got together with the Whitehall and Industry Group (WIG) whose charitable purpose is to ‘build understanding and co-operation between government and business for the greater public good.’ Nothing could be further from the stereotyped procedure and process-driven Civil Service caricatured by Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister.
Kate Davies, Notting Hill Housing Trust’s chief executive told Caritas at a reception given by the Prince of Wales at Clarence House on 23 February 2011: “We have had some really high calibre ‘fast streamers’ from Charity Next and although we all know how the world works, each party gets to see if from a different perspective.” She also made the point that civil servants have as part of their culture an attitude that they are there to help others, so it is a great fit. “They are adaptable, knowledgeable, quick to make connections and see what ‘cross-cutting’ benefit we can get from framing some of our work in a new way”, she added.
Another one of Davies’ ‘fast streamers’, Clare Southworth from the DWP, said how valuable the immersion in reality was. “People do things for people”, she said. “It’s all much more personal and you can see the results of your work, something you don’t get sitting in a Whitehall department.”
Developing partnerships
His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales told his guests that he has been trying to develop “really worthwhile partnerships between the public, private and NGO sectors” for over 20 years because “that way we can achieve far more.”
He went on to explain that he was hoping there would be secondees from the private sector coming forward in addition to the Civil Service and congratulated BAE Systems on its commitment to the scheme. “I hope we will see a great deal more of this approach because the combination will be extraordinarily effective in the future and with the requirements of the Big Society there is an enormous need for the charitable and voluntary sector to have the capabilities do what is required”, he said.
An independent evaluation of the scheme highlighted that specific work carried out by the participants had ‘lasting impact’ and that communication and understanding between the voluntary sector and the government had been ‘improved’.
How to participate in the scheme
Individuals or organisations who would like more information on how to participate in the scheme should contact
charitynext@wig.co.uk. The Charity Next secondments range from 6 to 12 months with the host charity and home government department sharing the costs. Charity Next charges a small brokerage fee to cover costs and secondment opportunities are advertised on
www.wig.co.uk and
http://princescharities.org/charity-next
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from Cass Business School. She has been one of the judges for the non-profit category of the Chartered Institute of Marketing's Excellence in Marketing Awards for the second year running.
She has also acted as clerk to the trustees of a small almshouses charity and as a member nominated trustee to a pension scheme of a multinational publishing company.
Click here for other articles written by Clarissa Dann
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