Published by a steering group of representatives from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), National Association of Councils for Voluntary Service (NACVS), National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG) and Partnership at Work, the report called A stitch in time… found that a small initial investment can have both financial and time rewards for a charity, and recommends that infrastructure bodies such as CVS that offer HR advice do more to encourage the sector to think proactively about the issues involved.

Although the report identifies that many of these infrastructure organisations are keen to move from being “problem fixers” to “problem preventers”, it also states how a change of culture within their client groups is required to make this possible, and so urges the sector to consider ways of streamlining support in order to avoid duplication and free up resources.

Joanna Wooten, NCVO’s Workforce Project Manager, said: “This report shows that when smaller organisations employ staff they sometimes find themselves unable to allocate adequate resources to training and development. We hope that they will be encouraged to budget for the cost of these at the time staff are employed, and also think about sourcing funders to cover such costs.”