Team Staffordshire is a group of infrastructure and support organisations that was originally convened in December 2014 to bring together VCSE, (Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprise), and other local partners in order to bid to the Building Better Opportunities Fund. This it did successfully in early 2016, being successful in the Stafford and South Staffordshire area (where the lead partner is Business Enterprise Support, BES).

Building on this success, Team Staffordshire will now seek to work across any appropriate local theme including but not limited to:

  • Employability and Skills
  • Social Inclusion
  • Children, Young People and Families
  • Social Care and Older People
  • Adults with multiple and complex needs
  • Mental Health

Team Staffordshire can be thought of as a collective bidding consortium, a contract management body or a local prime contractor. However our unique ethos is to work collaboratively to avoid duplication of effort or delivery and to build on the capacity of the VCSE sector.

Uniquely we do not predetermine who can be a member of the partnership or who will be the ‘prime contractor’. Instead the Core Group decides by consensus who is the most appropriate lead for any particular bidding opportunity. That contract lead partner then pulls together a delivery partnership from across the VCSE sector using all the members and contacts of the Core Group.

We work through a Cooperation Agreement of Core Group members which will now include representatives of frontline delivery partners as well as the eight local support agencies below, (listed alphabetically):

  1. Business Enterprise Support
  2. The Community Foundation for Staffordshire
  3. Engaging Communities (Healthwatch Staffordshire)
  4. Sports Across Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent
  5. South Staffordshire Community and Voluntary Action (SSCVA)
  6. Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce
  7. Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services (SCVYS)
  8. Support Staffordshire

We have also invited a representative of the district/borough local authorities to join the Core Group. In addition, key local partners from Staffordshire County Council and Stoke-on-Trent City Council have an open invitation to attend in an observer capacity.