Scotland

The Scottish Government has a consultation on whether existing Freedom of Information legislation should be widened to cover a greater range of bodies who deliver public services in Scotland.

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator has a new leaflet, 'Becoming a Charity in Scotland', giving advice to those organisations considering applying for charitable status.

Probably better to download the Word version, as the pdf is almost 6MB and an odd shape.

Scottish charity regulator OSCR has new performance indicators for the current reporting year, published monthly. These calculate the percentage of charities every month that have provided accounts that pass or fail the filing criteria, and those that pass but have some basic deficiencies.

Other indicators show response times by OSCR, applications refused or granted etc. http://www.oscr.org.uk/2010-11Indicators.stm.

Senscot, the organisation for social entrepreneurs in Scotland, has developed a legal service social enterprise to provide specialist knowledge at affordable rates.

Based in Glasgow, Senscot Legal Services launched on Monday (2nd August), http://www.se-legal.net.

Scotland's sector umbrella SCVO has produced research on how the Future Jobs Fund in Scotland is benefiting communities.

'Future Jobs: Future Communities' provides a snapshot of the impact of over 1,300 jobs created by the Third Sector Consortium. Download in pdf format, 1.13MB.

The Scottish Government has announced that it is going ahead with the Protecting Vulnerable Groups Scheme, its equivalent of the Vetting and Barring Scheme recently put on ice elsewhere in the UK. From 30th November, a new membership scheme will be phased in over 4 years to replace the current disclosure arrangements for people who work with vulnerable groups in Scotland.

Volunteer Friendly Award, a "simple, user-friendly quality standard" to support, recognise and reward groups across Scotland who are good at involving volunteers, has a new website at http://www.volunteerfriendly.org.uk.

The standard has been developed by Volunteer Centre Dundee, which has been funded to spread it wider.

Working Health Services Scotland, part of the Department for Work and Pensions Fit for Work scheme, is running a pilot project in Scotland to help people return to work following sickness.

To be eligible for the service someone needs to be employed in a small to medium sized enterprise (less than 250 employees) in Scotland, with no access to occupational health support, and experiencing health difficulties affecting their ability to work.