英格蘭財政學留學生英語碩士課程essay格式范文-Audio Notes from interview at CATH

羅伯特Bissest - CEO及公司秘書（曾為CATH公司工作九年）。他的職責是主要處理政府公關、戰略制定、公司財務和招標評估等;
Vivienne Valente- 行政副總裁，他們一起運營這個公司。負責的業務運營，人力資源和招聘。公司目前正面臨著一個非常困難的外部經濟環境。但是到目前為止，已經非常幸運的是，“QUACK”（Cheshire West and Cheshire Council）只從中央政府預算削減2.9％，相比全國各地的平均8.9％的預算削減少得多。這意味著，CATH公司還沒有遭到類似其他公司的財政削減，例如曼徹斯特，諾丁漢和利物浦的一些公司。

Background information on CATH

Robert Bissest - CEO & Company Secretary (has worked for CATH for nine years). Takes care of the strategic elements; finance, grant bidding, dealing with politicians etc.
Vivienne Valente - Deputy CEO together they run the organisation. Takes care of the operational aspects of the organisation; hiring and recruitment, personal / human resources and service deliveryAt present the organisation is faced with a very difficult external economic environment; up till now they believe they have been very fortunate that ’QUACK’ (Cheshire West and Cheshire Council) has only experience from central government a budget cut of 2.9%; compared to across the country of an average of 8.9% budget cuts. Which means that CATH has not received cuts as much as other authorities; for example Manchester, Nottingham and Liverpool.

Robert explained that as of yet the cuts have not filtered down to their organisation and they have not been affected. They have lost some money, have lost an element of the Harold Tomlins Centre rent grant (approximately £10, 250).

They believe they have had a stable past year; although have needed to reduce their staffing levels. At present they employ 35 full time staff; across eight sites.
“We deliver from the homeless community right through back out into the community again; so if you come to CATH you go on a client journey. Not just a bed for the night, you are expected to work with the staff to tackle aspects of your life”. Its not just about roof’s, its about education, health care, social care etc.

How are the actions of CATH determined by source of funding they received?
Websites to look at -
Homeless Link - they are the umbrella body who liaise with the government on behalf of homeless organisations; considering tackling of funding cuts etc#p#分頁標題#e#
CLG - communities and local government; they are responsible for the supporting people programme, housing benefit.
 

How the organisation runs?
Funding -
Statuary funding, discretionary funding (the local authorities acting as a conduit around annual grants / longer term grants and funding from the community.
The local community and corporate have raised £60, 000 in donations annually through fund raising events (e.g. the annual sleep out etc; important money)

Grant money from; supporting people / housing benefit. For the support element of the accommodation service (used to be funded through housing benefit, they used to claim depending upon the individuals status - e.g. long term job seekers). The Government questioned how much support each of the clients where receiving from the amount of grants they were supplying; as a result they ‘split it down the middle’. The government split it into housing benefit payment & the supporting people payments. Different hostels receive different amounts http://www.ukassignment.org/lxszyq-a/ of supporting people money; for Crispin House they receive a larger grant (as people are straight off the streets / more vulnerable clients). Each hostel has a unit cost; per person, per week. Crispin House gets a unit cost of £310 per person / per bed, per week - in order to receive the money, they have to provide occupancy levels, they can not claim the money if they can not achieve 95% occupancy. (Accountable to supporting people who they claim the money from - by producing performance indicators)

Funding available is reduced at step of the programme as they deem the clients to need less support as the move onto the next step (e.g. the highest amount of funding is available at Crispin House; where they are considered to be in need of the most support)

Floating support contract - contract is with supporting people. This is the ‘after care’ element of the programme, support when they get the client gets their own home.
CLG - sets an amount of funding to the local authorities in order to help deal with their homelessness; CATH place a bid to gain funding. CATH usually draws half of the funding available; as they are the largest homeless organisation in the area.

The organisation is very vulnerable; 86% of their funding is statutory / local authority allocated; therefore the cuts which are highlighted by the media shows that CATH could shrink hugely.
Bidding -
They write bid’s to gain further funding; put bids into Lotteries, Learning Skills, Transitions Funds. If there is a bid which they believe they meet the criteria; they will write a bid. Always has to be project related.
 

If cut’s where made, which services would be first to be reduced / abolished?
They believe that it would be very unlikely that the amounts of beds would be reduced; they believe that the two services first cut would be, Floating support and COAT service.#p#分頁標題#e#
At the moment the Harold Tomlin centre has been affected by funding cuts; they have lost the rent donation (although they hope they have found someone else to meet their rent figure - by a private organisation to fund the rent element).

Targets -
The last government had a 0% target for rough sleepers by 2012; The current government came into power and decided to remove this target. The figure from the street counts was approximately 400 people; now the current government have asked for an estimated amount of homeless sleepers on the streets from each local authority (in England). The Government have put the responsibility onto the organisations, to count their own homeless sleepers. They are not providing an funding for the local authorities to carry out their audits; the reason they are doing this is because “if the government do not recognise the problem, they do not need to fund it”.

Who are they Accountable to?
Government does not give money out without it being accountable; Accountable to supporting people who they claim the money from - by producing performance indicators & the Board of Trustee’s through board meetings.

They are accountable to each funding provider; they must show that the funding provided is spent at the site in which it was intended to fund. Monitored internally; by the financial department at CATH. Each site has a budget; none of the managers at the sites has any autonomy to make decisions on increased spend.
The money from private organisations http://www.ukassignment.org/lxszyq-a/ would ask to provide their accounts to show their money has been spent for what was attended. (e.g. the Bank of America).
Every quarter they have a board meeting; providing documentation of their budgets for each site. Also they are audited each year; who spend a week with them. They are bound by the Charity Commission (look at the charity commission website for the regulations in which CATH need to adhere to; to form further questions for next time we meet).
 

How is performance managed?
Monthly supervision for all staff; targets to meet. All staff have yearly appraisals and feed back to their supervisors / managers (including the CEO who feeds back to the board of trustee’s)
Volunteer’s work across the organisation; they add value to the service. Although without volunteers they would still exists.