Minutes of the management board held on 14th May, 2007.
Who gave apologies as they could not attend?
What did we discuss?
John Dow welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked RGU for offering to hold the meeting at the RGU, Garthdee Road in Aberdeen.
We agreed that the Minutes of the last meeting, which was held on 20th March 2007, were accurate.
Update from previous meeting:
Communications Survey & Strategy:
It was agreed that we needed to confirm a list of requirements to Lesley Duff who met us with in March. Lesley works as a web applications analyst and is part of the Institute's Learning Technology Team who are based at Strathclyde University. We want to find out the cost of making a website, info board etc.
ACTION: John Dow and Stacey MacDonald to find out more details and report back to group.
We discussed different ways to distribute the communication survey as few replies from the original request had been received.
ACTION: John Dow to progress.
Requests to the group for information or involvement in other Projects/Groups
ACTION: Stacey to draft a standard reply and give an early acknowledgement to anyone requesting information about the group or a work request prior to requests being allocated by John and Michael.
A search on formal registration for Scottish Voices logo has been completed, Linda Walker said that it should be registered shortly and we are waiting on details from Karen Anderson, the Institute's Corporate Services manager.
A discussion took place about how the group deal with requests that are directly related to the objectives of Scottish Voices and it was agreed that:
Engagement with Scottish Voices
It was brought to the attention of the Board that some social Work academics feel disengaged from the activities of Scottish Voices as the group now link directly with service users and carers.
It was agreed that individual HEI Board members would speak to academics in their university to see how they might more fully become engaged.
It was noted that the website (where minutes are posted) and individuals feeding back to university groups are good initial ways to communicate.
Funding
Lack of funding was identified as a major issue for universities to pay staff to support Service Users and Carers engagement in programmes.
It was noted that funding for Scottish Voices, which comes from the Scottish Executive, should show value for money and the group should have a clear aim to strengthen Service User and Carer involvement in social work/social care education and learning in Scotland.
It was agreed that:
Scottish Voices would be involved in a workshop later in the year with SIESWE, SSSC and Learning Networks to address a range of issues about funding, particularly in relation to how Service Users and Carers are rewarded for their valuable contributions. Michael Coull noted that although Service Users and Carers would like to be rewarded, we should not always assume that they would require or want financial payment.
ACTION: : John Dow and Linda Walker to progress the workshop and report to the next meeting
It was also agreed that:
Scottish Voices need to agree a position on funding and write a policy on their position for the website. (This is in relation to funding 'in' to support the involvement of service users and carers & funding 'out' in relation to how and what service users are paid for their contributions).
Working with the Scottish Social Services Council:
Brenda Gillies from the SSSC attended the Board meeting and we heard about Brenda's role which is to make sure that the quality of the degrees in Social Work are as good as they can be. We were told that an annual monitoring report is sent out to obtain information from the 8 Universities currently teaching the social work degree. It is the information in these reports that informs the SSSC about how well the social work degrees are progressing and what, if any, areas need to be improved.
These are public documents posted on the Scottish Social Services Council website .
Brenda informed the group she and others at the Scottish Social Services Council would welcome working closely with Scottish Voices and would be happy to discuss how this might happen in the future. One area of joint work was identified as the forthcoming Funding event, (see above).
Brenda Gillies thanked us for our time and told us that she would welcome contact from the group and her email address is brenda.gillies@sssc.uk.com
Other matters arising:
How do Scottish Voices make an Impact?
It was agreed that an A4 factsheet is put together with the following information.
ACTION: Elizabeth McDade and Margaret McKay agreed to take this forward and produce a draft.
Engagement with Other National Groups and Local Service Users & Carers.
It was agreed that:
The voice of Service Users and Carers could be strengthened in Scotland by Scottish Voices contacting other national Service Users and Carer groups eg. Scottish Consortium for Learning disability (SCLD), Changing Lives Group, Carers Scotland and asking if they would like to become affiliated members. This would mean more service users and carers across Scotland would know about and be able to comment on the work of this group and wider networks. This group could also strengthen the voice of these other groups too.
ACTION: John Dow to progress
University service user and carer groups are to be contacted and asked if they would be willing to share "their story" about how they came into existence. These stories would show some really good examples of the ways in which service users and carers are influencing developments in universities and how valuable service user and carer involvement is.
These stories could be presented either in writing, a video of the work or through a taped discussion, all of which could be posted on the Scottish Voices website and distributed across groups.
What else did we talk about?
We asked the question about the Joint Social Work Education Conference (JSWEC) and the recent request for people to apply for free places. The Scottish Executive funding has allowed 5 service users and carers to attend the conference from Scotland and names of successful individuals will be posted on the Scottish Voices website as soon as all offers have been made and accepted. We agreed that this is a great opportunity for the voice of Scottish service users and carers involved in a range of activities in relation to social work/social care education to be heard.
When will we meet again?
We all agreed that the next meeting is to take place on August 24th. Stacey MacDonald will contact everyone by letter and email to tell us where the meeting will take place.