Blog | Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency

The power of digital to support collaboration

7 August 2018 - 9:13pm

Ordinary Radical – Lucy Cuzzocrea

We need to get prevention back on the agenda!

25 July 2018 - 4:38pm

If I’d known then what I know now!

A few of us at MVDA were having one of those ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now’ conversations last week. We, parents of now adult children, were recounting the very real, and unchanging struggle of parenthood in the context of our awareness of the many things we’ve got wrong with our kids. We shared some things we probably don’t admit too often and things we certainly wouldn’t admit beyond the bond of our developing friendship as colleagues.

How can we get the JSNA to talk our language?

18 June 2018 - 12:38pm

Anyone who has “read” a JSNA (Joint Strategic Needs Assessment) will understand that sometimes it is speaking a different language. The JSNA looks at the current and future health and care needs of local populations, to inform and guide the planning and commissioning (buying) of health, well-being and social care services within a local authority area.

Leaning into discomfort - the challenge of partnership working

15 May 2018 - 11:04pm

‘Lean into the discomfort’ is a little mantra I’ve been speaking over myself a lot lately. I picked it up as a concept in personal development training and it’s something I always come back to after reflecting upon my frustrations about partnership working, frustrations I guess we all have when working outside of our own organisional boundaries. It’s one of those concepts, which basically means ‘this is going to feel really scary but it will be worth it’ -sounds great in theory but the reality will cost you!

Guest blog: Keeping all the plates spinning at A Way Out

26 April 2018 - 10:42am

Guest blog by Sarah McManus, CEO of A Way Out

I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother… and, for the last 18 months, CEO of an organisation called A Way Out – a charity now celebrating 16 years of supporting vulnerable women, families and young people in Stockton.

Like so many women, life can sometimes feel like a circus - a whirling carousel incorporating the ups and downs of operating under each of these multiple identities. There are plates to spin and hoops to jump through in order to keep everything going!