The Community Sector Surge Pool (CSSP) is an initiative to connect the sector by sharing staff via secondment. CSSP provides organisations with the requisite resources to register their capacity to send staff on secondment and to efficiently request the need for a surge workforce by an organisation in need.
The purpose of establishing such capacity is to mitigate the impact to clients and social services due to furloughing of staff. In a very real sense, working together in such a way across the community services sector has the very real potential to save lives.
WACOSS would like to acknowledge that need for the CSSP may not eventuate which, ultimately, would be a good outcome for all of us. But, we would still urge our members and other community service organisations to register just in case.
Once you are a part of the pool, your staff can be requested by a critical service in time of need.
Some core documents to facilitate secondment:
The above documents are templates, which will allow matched organisations to enter their requisite information within. The sections for them to enter are either highlighted (MOU) or coloured (Secondment Agreement).
Our intention is for organisations wishing to contribute or draw from the surge pool to review them (along with the info sheets) and then determine if acceptable to proceed with the engagement.
WACOSS has developed a COVID-19 Resources page that provides information, advice, resources, tools for community service organisations with the latest updates to WA Government information.
Many services in our community rely on generous support from volunteers all over WA.
As we move through this challenging period where COVID-19 is impacting our ability to continue to deliver important services to the community, this impact is also being felt in organisations who rely on volunteers to continue their work, which can lead to service disruptions with serious consequences for the people we support.
If your organisation is in need for volunteers, please reach out to Volunteering WA and follow their processes to register volunteering opportunities at your organisation. Similarly, if your volunteers have capacity to dedicate more of their time outside your organisation, please encourage them to reach out to Volunteering WA and explore the available options.
By working together across the community sector we can ensure that all of us make it through this difficult period together.