Minutes of the management board held on 20th March, 2007
John Dow welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked Margaret McKay and the SSSC for offering to hold the meeting at the SSSC in Dundee.
We agreed that the Minute of the last meeting which was held on 31st January, 2007 was accurate.
We agreed that Lesley Duff from the Institute could audio tape this meeting as a trial as the group may want to make the Minutes of the meeting available to people who prefer to listen to a recording.
Karen Anderson from the Institute gave a short talk to the group and we agreed that:
We need to agree on the key messages from our Constitution to make sure that we can help others understand what Scottish Voices is about and what we hope to achieve.
We need to be communicating with many groups of people including university staff, students, the learning networks, the Scottish Social Services Council and other national organisations.
We need to decide who will be the main contact or contacts for the group and if we want to accept help from people in the Institute or the SSSC.
We need to decide what we will use to communicate with -for example we could talk to people about the group ourselves, we could produce leaflets or newsletters or we could have a website.
Lesley Duff from the Institute talked to us about what we could do with a website and with other computer-based technologies. This included:
Keeping our own web pages on the Institute website or perhaps buying our own website name which would cost between £10 and £50 to register. Whichever one we choose, the staff at the Institute can help us set up the website and help us learn how to use it and keep it up to date ourselves.
We can set up usernames and passwords so that there are some parts of the website which only group members can see and we can use this to chat to each other in between meetings.
We can use the website to show people what the group has achieved and we can also use it to let people contact us and give us their suggestions.
We can make links with other websites such as the university and learning networks' websites and ask them to make links to our website.
We don’t need to decide to everything at the beginning, we can test out how things work between ourselves before we make it public.
We can make sound recordings of our meetings and people can download these from the website. We can tell people a bit about ourselves and our experiences and we can record these rather than just write them down.
We can set up a mailing list so that we can communicate with each other in between meetings. This means that we could send an email to one address and it would automatically be sent on to everybody in the group without us having to remember everybody’s email address.
We can encourage the social work lecturers and other learning network staff that we work with to join in these discussions so that they know what the group are doing.
We can check who visits our website to see who is not visiting our website - that way we will know which groups we need to find better ways of communicating with.
We need to make sure there we have strong links with all the service users and carers who are involved in our networks and not just do everything ourselves. We can put the minutes of our meetings on the website so that everybody can read them.
We have agreed that it took such a long time to agree on the name of 'Scottish Voices' that it would be a shame to lose it so we have asked Karen Anderson to go ahead and register the trademark name for us.
We have asked Lesley Duff to continue to look at ways in which we can use the website and other technologies to help us.
We have agreed that it is important to remember that websites are only one way of communicating and we need to have lots of ways to communicate to make sure we involve everybody. We have agreed that it would be a good idea to send out a short survey to ask how people would like us to communicate, how often they want to hear from us and in what form for example in a newsletter. Stacey MacDonald is going to draft a survey and provide us all with paper copies to hand out to our own contacts. Once we have the results of this survey we will decide on the best way to communicate.
At our last meeting we agreed that the money we have is not enough to cover all our costs and we agreed that we should send a letter to the groups we represent asking them if they can help in any way for example by hosting a meeting, by giving us our travel costs or by giving a donation to the group. We have not yet had a reply from anybody and we agreed that Stacey MacDonald should send us a copy of the letter that was sent and that we should speak to our own organisations about this.
We agreed that we should spend time at a future meeting to look at expenses and to make sure nobody in the group is being unfairly treated. John Dow suggested we might want to set up a meeting along with the Institute to which all our organisations would be invited along with somebody from the SSSC, the Executive and somebody from Jobcentre Plus who can tell us all what is allowed and what is not.We agreed that this would be a good idea as it might help show the Executive that there are differences between what they say should happen and what is allowed.
We talked about employing a Development Worker who would work with us and help us. However, we now think that it will not be possible to employ somebody for such a short timescale and that until the group has more secure funding we should not do this.
We agreed that the money we have can be used to commission or buy specific pieces of work when we need them.
Although we only set up in January, we heard that already other people know about us and have asked us to do some pieces of work. We need to find a way of dealing with these requests and agreed that:
We should only be responding to requests that are directly related to the group's objectives. In some cases this might mean saying that we can't help but suggesting some other people or groups who can help.
We agreed that Michael Coull (as Secretary) and John Dow would be the main points of contact for the group and that we would say this on the website. John and Michael will ensure that requests are relevant and if they are not sure, they may contact other Board members to help them make a decision.
We agreed that it is important to make sure that we involve everybody and not just the Board Members and agreed that any opportunities to become involved will be sent round all the services users and carers involved with the group. John Dow and Michael Coull will make sure this happens with the support of Stacey MacDonald but we must all help by letting other members of our own groups know about these opportunities.
We agreed that we will keep a list of all the requests we receive and make a record of how we responded to these requests and that we may put this on our website to show what the group has achieved.
We looked at the work requests that we have received so far and agreed that in future we will talk to the wider of group of people about these however on this occasion, due to a shortage of time, the following members of the Management group volunteered:
Request from the SSSC to look at a report on Stakeholder Views of the new degree in social work - Michael Coull and Aman Lee volunteered and John Dow noted that Elinor Dowson might also be interested in this. Stacey MacDonald will pass these names on to the SSSC.
Request from the SSSC to provide information for their ebulletin and to talk about ways in which they can work with Scottish Voices - John Dow volunteered.
A request from the Communications Team at the SSSC to discuss their Equality Duty Action Plan - the group decided that they were probably not the best people to discuss this with. Margaret McKay noted that in her role as Council member she had already suggested ELCAP as a suitable alternative. John Dow suggested the TODAY group in Fife and the group agreed that if they could think of any other groups they would pass this information on to Stacey Macdonald who would pass this on to the SSSC.
A request from the Care Forum within the Scottish Training Federation for a service user to become a member of this Forum. Aman Lee indicated that he would be interested in discussing this further and Stacey MacDonald will pass on the contact details.
The SSSC are also looking for a service user and carer to join an approvals panel to look at a new qualification that is being introduced. Aman Lee, John Dow and William Rae all indicated that they would be interested in this and Stacey MacDonald will pass on their details.
Wendy Laird pointed out that the Learning Networks are looking at ways to improve the involvement of service users and carers and are holding an event shortly to look at induction for social care workers.
Wendy Laird also talked to the group about the work she does as a carer for the Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA) and the group agreed that she should talk to SWIA about Scottish Voices helping them find service users to take part in their inspections.
John Dow pointed out that some social work academics are concerned about their links with and involvement in the group. The group agreed that they need to think about this and look at the best way of communicating with and involving all academics and professionals.
John Dow told the group that the Scottish Executive has agreed to provide funding to help some service users and carers attend a conference in Swansea in July which looks at social work education. Further details will be circulated to the group when they are available.
Stacey MacDonald noted that not everybody had returned the form with their available dates but that dates for May, August and November would be finalised and sent out as soon as possible.
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