Thanks for all you advice,

I don't have an employer as such - I am a member of a 2 person, (in reality 1.1 person co-op)

The problem is usually I can very easily manager my workload between my clients, but over the last 6 weeks my work has massively increased as the local authority have commissioned applications for voluntary sector grants for the next three and half years.

In the last round (in 2005/6) I was only preparing what was only 5 budgets, this year it rose to 14. Three of this were for a consortium bid, so it was more complex as couldn't just write the budgets, the consortium members had to be continually consulted and it was like walking on a tightrope, and they were intent on defending their territories.

Also.....

Two of the organisation needed support i writing the bids as they did not have sufficiently skills staff.

All this could be manageable, but......

(1) The council were 4 days late making the applications available, but they kept to their original deadline - this meant that an opportunity to take a more relaxed look at the application over the first weekend was missed.

(2) There was a move away from 'equality-led' funding to more generative service specifications encompassing all equalities - e.g. organisations which give specialist advice to young adults with learning disabilities and their parents had to compete for the same pots of money for organisations that work with people with dementia and their carers - so, for example a national advice agency that provides lower threshold support with no local track record could tick more boxes than an established local charity that provides intensive support, so in theory - local charities lose out, and their clients have to make do with whatever support the national agencies are prepared to let them have. This means that everyone had to raise their game. The problem is many organisations were woefully prepared for this- not just the ones I was working with.

That also is manageable, but........

The commissioning officers were clueless about how to write a specification. They were too long. The service conditions were often contradictory. The in one spec, 17 outcomes had to be met - most of these were not even outcomes at all, but 'noble' aims, and at the other end administrative procedures.

But, with creative thinking that would be managable but.......

(3)The application form was appalling.

There was no discernible correlation between the spec and the form.
It was laid out - I can't say designed, as designed would imply that someone was actually thinking about what they were doing at the time - e.g. question 5b 'How these meet the grant criteria' NOT How these meet the grant criteria's outcomes. Half of the grant criteria is covered by other questions anyway, but .. the council wanted the answers duplicated.

The accompanying 'guidance notes' were a joke in themselves. Not providing guidance on how to best interpret the questions, but just repeating what was on the form.

The form was technically badly laid out. Some of the answer boxes were text boxes, some were tables, some were blank lines with or without a border round them. So, when one came to the end of a box, it was unpredictable what would happen next, and it was down to guess work how to best tidy the boxes. Also someone saw fit to centre-justify everything, including the stats boxes and the budget information. i could, and when I fully evaluate the process probably will go on forever describing the faults.

What stresses me most is that the commissioning officers are paid enormous salaries but are incapable of applying care and quality to their work. I have seen very small charitable trusts design technically better forms.

So...........


The outcome was my clients were stressed and panicking. I was feeling their stress, but 5 to 6 times so. I was constantly running round from client to client trying to give everyone a 'fair share' of my time. Over the last week I was regularly working late at night to fit everything in. I have a massive backlog of work to get to grips with.

I haven't even had time or energy to send out invoices.

My body have forgotten how to rest - it just sleeps when it has had enough.

and strangely - last night instead of feeling a sense of relief, I felt intense depression.