Welcome

Welcome to the Learning Together Cheshire and Warrington website.

Learning Together Cheshire and Warrington (LTCW) is the voluntary sector Learning Consortium for the Cheshire and Warrington Sub-Region. We are a membership organisation which seeks to promote and represent members' interests related to learning and skills development.

For more information about us follow this link.

Keep in touch through twitter

You can keep informed by following us on twitter... as we publish bulletins and updates to our website we will tweet and let you know.

ALTOGETHER BETTER

Altogether Better is one of four national whole place Community Budget pilot areas that will test new, radical and local approaches to delivering public services. It is focussed on the Cheshire West and Chester area.

This programme is about real and lasting change. It will involve reviewing local public services alongside our partner organisations in the public, private, voluntary and community sector.

The Programme aims to tackle the root causes of longstanding problems, promoting early intervention and deploying resources in the most effective way through the pooling of budgets and partnership working across sectors.

To find out more go to the Altogether Better website. LTCW will post the weekly bulletins that outline progress to date on the news area of the LTCW website. All bulletins can be seen on the news area of the Altogether Better website.

LTCW Conference 12 a success!

Conference Theme - Impact - Making, Measuring and Showing

In excess of 60 delegates attended this year's Conference which this year was held in the Middlewich Community Church on March 22nd. Feedback from delegates has been universally postive, saying how much they had enjoyed the day and found it useful. You can access presentations given during the day, both in the Plenary Sessions and Workshops from ther Conference12 page on our website

A varied programme during the day covered the different aspects of Impact  - whether it is making, measuring or showing an impact.

A popular feature of the day were "Visual Minutes" created by a Team of artists who produced a piece of artwork for each workshop and the various plenary sessions recording the key points and comments made. These are now available on our website and also in the forthcoming newsletter which is sent to all member organistaions and registered partners.

Monitoring the Cuts

The TUC sponsored blogsite "False Economy" has recently announced the outcome of their research produced from Freedom of Information requests to local authorities across the UK which highlights more than 2,000 voluntary organisations that have had funding cuts or complete withdrawal of funding.

The False Economy research shows that charities face net funding reductions of more than £110 million this year, though the final figure is likely to be far higher given that some large authorities have not yet finalised where the cuts will hit.

You can access the full information they present as well as access an interactive map presenting the findings at spreadsheet of their reserach from http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/exclusive-more-than-2000-charities-and-community-groups-face-cuts

Another website  Voluntary Sector Cuts is a collaborative project which maps intelligence about voluntary groups experiencing reductions in public sector funding.

If you're involved in a voluntary or community group which has been told its statutory funding will be reduced, you can be part of this work by sharing your story.

Just fill in a simple online form to share your experiences and the impact the cuts will have on the people who use your services.

Your contribution will be crucial to building a wider picture of the scale of the challenge ahead in your community, your region, or nationally.

Cuts that you share on the voluntary sector cuts website will be made available publicly in a google spreadsheet.

Join us!

LTCW welcomes not-for-profit voluntary and community organisations active in the area to join our learning network. Download an information sheet which explains what we do and the advantages of becoming a member.

You can either join on-line or fill in and return a membership application form.

To join on-line please go to the "Join Us" page by following this link.
Please note - only third sector organisations active in Cheshire and Warrington are eligible to join LTCW.

If you are not from such an organistion, you can still stay in touch with news on the learning agenda and receive our monthly newsletter which is E-mailed free of charge by registering for our newsletter (see panel to the right).

Training Calendar

At the beginning of each month we publish a Training Calendar which highlights training opportunities available to the sector. This is a compilation of the training events that are listed on this website for a rolling three month period.

The calendar is published as a separate document to the newsletter and is sent out to all LTCW members every month. Follow this link to the latest training calendar. Organisations who are not members can register to receive the training calendar by e-mail each month by using the "register for our E-newsletter" link to the right of this page.

Training opportunties are also shown on the training pages of this website or via the calendar to the right of this article – click on to any highlighted date to see what is available.

Job Vacancies

From time to time member organisations let us know of job vacancies within their own or partner organisations. We include these on our website as a service to our members. You can see what is currently available from this link to our vacancies page.

We would like to hear from you

If you have any comments about this website or would like to suggest some possible content that would be useful to our membership please let us know.

Please go to the contact page and send us your message.

Helping to get Britain On-Line

Go ON UK aims to bring the benefits of the internet to every individual and every organisation in every community across the UK.

This is an urgent priority because:

• Only 14 per cent of SMEs sell products and services online (Lloyds Banking Group/ BDRC April 2012)
• ICT is the biggest skills-gap in the charity sector (NCVO)
• 8.2 million people have still NEVER used the internet (ONS Labour Force Survey Feb 2012)

Go ON UK is a radical cross-sector partnership to make the UK the world’s most digitally capable nation where no one – old or disadvantaged- and no organisation – even the smallest – is left behind.

For the first time a national broadcaster, a bank, a utility company, a telecoms provider, a community retail network, a charity and a funder have pledged to work together with the support of the Government to help make the UK the world’s most digitally capable nation in which everyone and every organisation is able to enjoy the social, economic and cultural benefits of the internet. To achieve this they have agreed to share their expertise, resources, reach and networks.

And they are encouraging every organisation and every individual in the UK to join them on this mission. LTCW has signed up as a partner to promote awareness of the campaign.

For further information go to the Go On website