Who was at the meeting?
Who gave apologies as they could not attend?
What did we discuss?
John Dow welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked the Glasgow School of Social Work for hosting the meeting at their premises.
Nadine Archibald was introduced to the Group. Nadine is a new Administrator at the Institute who came along to the meeting to meet the group as she may be providing some administrative support to Scottish Voices in the future.
John Dow gave the group his Chair's Update and told us about the workshop on reward and recognition for service users and carers which Scottish Voices are participating in and this will take place in February. John has been our representative on the planning group but as he is already representing us on some other groups it was agreed that Elinor Dowson would now be our new representative on this group and we will get an update on this at our next meeting.
We agreed that John Dow will continue to represent us on the work we are doing with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) to hold a workshop for all the universities which will allow them to show a good example of how they work with service users and carers on their programmes. John told us that each university will get an invite to attend and will be given approximately 15 minutes to present their example. It will be up to each individual university to decide how they present this and whether the service users and carers themselves will help with the presentation. Planning for this event is still going on but it is likely to take place in March 2008. John will keep us informed about this event after each planning meeting.
We noted that some members of the group had been unable to attend and had not been able to get one of the other representatives to take their place. We wondered if this was because of the distance involved in travelling to and from the meetings. We agreed that we were very grateful for all the organisations who had hosted our meetings this year and, although we have tried to change the venue to make it fairer on everybody, we wondered whether in future it would be better to pick a central location such as Dundee or Perth so that nobody would have to travel particularly long distances. Margaret McKay said she was sure that the SSSC would be happy to host the meetings if the group thought that Dundee would be a good central venue. As we have now had a meeting in Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow we will hold our next meeting in Dundee and make a decision about locations for our meeting then.
We talked about some of the work that is happening in our individual user and carer groups at the Universities and Learning Networks and some of the issues and problems that are around at the moment. Some of the issues linked in to discussions that Linda Walker from the Institute and Wendy Paterson from the South East Learning Network had been having and Linda gave us a paper which outlined discussions they had been having with the Scottish Government about this area of work and we noted that Joyce Mouriki from Voices of Experience (VOX) and the Scottish Consortium for Learning Disabilities (SCLD) had also been at these discussions.
Linda Walker explained that most of the funding for service user and carer involvement comes from the Scottish Government. They are aware that there is a very wide range of good work going on although it would be good to work with service users, carers and others to try and coordinate some of this work more fully in the future. We agreed that it was really important for the local and regional work to keep taking place but that it was also important to look at more co-ordination to share some of the good practice that is happening so that the smaller local groups are not 'reinventing the wheel' and struggling with the same issues that other groups have struggled with in the past. We agreed that there may not be any obvious answers but we should at least join in the conversations to see how we could collectively make a difference.
Following on from these discussions and from the last meeting where we agreed it would be a good time to take stock of what we have achieved and what problems we face, Linda proposed to the group that an independent person should be asked to undertake a review. This review would be used to listen to a range of views and opinions from Scottish Voices, the Universities and Learning Networks, other national service user and carer groups and other interested groups such as the SSSC and the Institute to see what the future might look like for Scottish Voices and how it might work with other groups.
Linda Walker confirmed that the Institute would not be independent enough to undertake the review and the group identified one or two possible people to do such a piece of work. Linda Walker said the Institute may be able to help fund some of this piece of work but we agreed that some of the Scottish Voices funding could also be used as we have not yet spent as much of our budget as we had thought.
We agreed to go ahead with this independent review as long as we see and comment on the report before it goes to the Scottish Government and we agreed that Keir Hardie, Elinor Dowson and Aman Lee would work with Linda to firm up the remit of this piece of work and to recruit who does the review. We agreed that expenses for those members involved in this piece of work will be covered by our own funding rather than from the organisation they represent. The main focus of this review would be to see in what ways Scottish Voices could be more helpful in supporting the networks of service users and carers that it represents.
We received an email from the Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA) after they came to talk to us at our last meeting. The email stated that they wish to set up a service user forum which will meet 3 or 4 times a year and they invited Scottish Voices to attend this forum. We agreed that this was a good example of how lots of organisations are trying to set up their own groups without linking in to those that are already existing. We agreed that Elinor Dowson should draft a reply saying that we are concerned to make best use of resources and would be willing to work with them to look at how the forum might be best achieved although we also noted that we need to be sure we have enough resources and support within our group to be able to do this.
Elinor Dowson reported back to the group that the meeting of other university academics and representatives she discussed at our last meeting had been about more than just funding and we agreed that it was important for everybody to make clear that Scottish Voices wants to work with other groups rather than in competition with them.
Planning for the Future
Elinor Dowson had prepared a paper for the group which contained a list of issues that the group need to consider. This included:
We agreed that Elinor's paper had been very useful in helping us see the issues we need to address and although it had been a difficult journey for some to get Scottish Voices up and running we must see this new group as the beginning of a new journey rather than the final destination. We agreed we should read Elinor's paper in our own time and think about how we have a responsibility as a Board member. We recognised the difficulty of setting up a national group that only meets 4 times a year and yet we can celebrate some small successes so far. Stronger links with our wider networks and clearer communication was an overall aim agreed by the group for the future.
We heard from Margaret McKay that she had raised the issue of funding for universities with the SSSC and that she has since been assured that this will happen. The exact details have still to be worked out but it may be distributed in a similar way to the funding that universities in England and Wales receive. Although Margaret is fairly confident that this will happen we need to await the formal announcement from the Scottish Government.
We agreed that we must keep up with our ambitions (such as developing the website and communication tools) but not let ourselves be forced into a quicker pace than we can cope with. We agreed that it was good to have the same people coming to the meetings but we should not pressure people to attend and remind them that they can ask one of the other representatives to attend in their place if they cannot make a meeting.
We agreed that it would be good to contact those groups who do not yet have a representative on the Board again and offer to meet to discuss the group. Linda Walker told us that some universities are looking at their user and carer involvement as part of the Change Academy and so it might be a good time to make contact with them again.
We agreed that we would be aiming to hold our first Annual General Meeting (AGM) in June 2008.
We agreed that we should share our contact details amongst the group to have more communication between meetings and have asked Stacey MacDonald to coordinate this. Linda Walker will also look into setting up a shared space for us to post messages and keep a record of our conversations on Basecamp which the Institute will support.
We also agreed that we should aim to have the development day for Board members in early February and have asked Stacey MacDonald to find a date that will suit most people.
What else did we talk about?
We heard how both Aman Lee and John Dow had now taken part in the approvals panels for the SSSC and how helpful John Yellowlees had been in making sure that the service users were supported in this process.
We agreed that it would be good to have some information on Board members on our website and anybody who is interested in telling their story for the website should contact Stacey MacDonald. We also have an open invite to submit pieces of information or stories for the SSSC bulletin.
When will we meet again?
The next meeting will take place in Dundee and Stacey MacDonald will confirm the date with us.