Singer Daniel Beddingfield, freed hostage Norman Kember and Poet Laureate Andrew Motion all featu

Scams involving large donation cheques, where a return of part of the money is requested by the donor, have been highlighted by the Charity Commission. The original cheque bounces. Although not a new trick, it seems to be resurfacing. Commission press release at http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/detail.asp?ReleaseID=221412&NewsAreaID=2.

A member organisation of Northern Ireland umbrella NICVA warns of another problem, with its bank having received a written request to transfer a substantial amount of money to an account in Singapore. Fortunately the bank was suspicious of the instructions. It can help if organisations which need to give bank details out to collect public donations etc. keep a separate account for such income, with transfers under tight control.

Scottish umbrella body SCVO has already set up its web pages covering issues around the Scottish Parliament elections in May 2007.

Northern Ireland’s Department for Social Development is developing a strategy to address benchmarks and performance standards for voluntary sector support organisations to help ensure consistency of service provision. As part of this they will be researching what is provided by existing support organisations, to be completed by November.

A draft strategy should appear in January 2007.

See Community NI, http://www.communityni.org/index.cfm/section/news/key/DSD18_08_08.

AskCharity, which puts media professionals in touch with charity contacts on relevant issues, has conducted a survey on the recent spate of ’sensational’ television documentaries about severely disabled people. They asked both charity disability/health/mental health contacts and users of http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch, a site aimed at disabled people.

While there was considerable disquiet about the marketing and to a lesser extent the content of these programmes, the Ouch! users tended to be more unhappy. See AskCharity blog - pdf linked is 128kb.

Charities and communities are denying those with a criminal record the opportunity to turn their life around through volunteering because of poor disclosure practice, according to a new guide by Volunteering England and Nacro.

Read more and download ‘Involving Ex-offenders in Volunteering’ (pdf, 2Mb).

An online course/resource ‘Building Electronic Communities and Networks’ has been produced in connection with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s agricultural information project, but will be of interest to a wider spectrum.

http://www.imarkgroup.org/modulelist_en.asp

(Source: UKriders list)

Images of Disability, a site launched earlier in August to give government bodies guidance about portraying disabled people in communications materials, also has other useful sections such as on providing information in appropriate formats for disabled people.

The image bank may be of use but is not yet live and will probably charge. http://www.imagesofdisability.gov.uk.

After the success of the Mind Your Self campaign run with the Men’s Health Forum in Ireland - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/ni/mindyourself - BBC Northern Ireland is now looking for other local social issues that might be developed into a social action campaign for 2007 or 2008.

Email: martina.chapman@bbc.co.uk if you have a topic or want to discuss further.

(Source: NICVA eNews)

The much-delayed implementation plans for the European C Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment are out for consultation. The regulations, impacting on the disposal of a wide range of electrical goods, are now due to come into force from 1st July 2007.

Responses by 17th October. http://www.dti.gov.uk/consultations/page32448.html.

The Scottish Executive is consulting on youth work to help develop a strategy - runs to 1st November.

The Compensation Act, expected to come into effect in spring 2007, will enable courts to take into account when making a judgement (on compensation claims) whether an activity might not have happened without the volunteers or the organisation involved.

While some see this ‘reduced duty of care’ as discouraging take up of services, others reckon it will make it easier to recruit volunteers. See Sandy Adirondack’s Legal Update at http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/managing.htm#compensationact-s1 for more.