Community Lives Consortium

ACTIONS AGREED IN TEAM CO-ORDINATORS FORUM MINUTES FROM 2008

Team Co's Meeting - 15th October 2008

Previous Minutes and Matters Arising

On Call & Additional Hours

The next meeting for the Excessive Hours working group will be held in November. It is now time to ‘firm up’ their proposal regarding how we can reduce excessive hours.

Staff working additional hours continues to be a problem although there was a small decrease in the number of staff working excessive hours on the latest report.

Temporary Operations Manager Post

The Director will be returning to work in November 08. The temporary posts created as a result of the Director’s maternity leave will continue until January 09. All the temporary post holders have been informed.

Targeting Support Action Plan

The future plans for Targeted Support were on the agenda of the CST meeting held this week. Rick will be sending an email to everyone soon to advise them of the outcome of the review.

Pensions

At the last Service Co Forum, the Personnel Manager presented the Consortium’s proposed pension provision for Service Co-ordinators. (See Service Co Forum minutes 4th September 08 for details)

The Personnel Manager is waiting for a response from the Service Co’s and then a formal response from UNISON before the proposal can be put to the Management Board for approval.

Pension provision is also on the Team Co’s agenda for this meeting – See below

Mobile Phones

The Business Manager has been contacted to tell him about the problems with Orange and asked if it would be possible to have a small contract with another supplier for On Call phones.

The Business Manager said that he did not receive many replies to his email requesting information about problems with the mobile phone network. He has suggested using ‘Call divert’ to landlines or personal mobiles when covering On Call

A discussion followed. It was highlighted that the problem for On Call is not so much receiving calls but having to make numerous calls when trying to cover shifts. It was agreed to ask the Business Manager again to find a different contract, preferably with O2, for the On Call service.

Volunteers to Review Targeted Support

The acting temporary Director thanked those who volunteered to be involved in the review of Targeted Support as requested.

Team Co Meetings

Team Co-ordinators agreed that they would like to meet up a week before each Forum to set their agenda, look at any other agenda items, share information, plan training etc. The meeting would take about two hours.

Team Co's to look for venues with no cost. Senior Managers and Contract Managers will be informed to let them know what has been agreed.

Mileage

A question was raised - why the mileage rate for essential car users has not increased. Currently, about 40 people are entitled to Essential Car Users allowance at a cost of £35,000 a year and we need to look at better and fairer ways of using this money. We also need to consider our Carbon Footprint. We are working with UNISON to look at other options and a working group is to be set up through the JCC meetings. Jonathon volunteered to be part of that group.

Pay rise

There is no information on this years pay award. Peter has suggested looking at the UNISON or ACAS website for more up to date information. www.unison.co.uk or www.acas.org.uk

Since the Forum, an interim pay award has been agreed at 2.45% back dated to April. Pay arrears will be included in our November pay.

Pensions

Team Co’s wanted to know if the proposed changes to the Service Co pension provision would have any affect on the current Team Co pension scheme. The group were informed that current pension arrangements will not be affected by the proposed changes for Service Co’s. The intention is to reduce the gap in the current system by raising the employer contribution from 5% to 7% from October 08 with a view to a further increase in the next financial year.

All pension provision will be subject to review under Government guidelines in 2012 and the Consortium cannot promise that pension provision will not change in the long term. Final Salary Schemes are very expensive and the Consortium will need to consider a number of options and one of these might be to close the scheme to new members. We may also need to look at contributions paid to the scheme.

Targeted Support

During a general discussion the following points were made:-

• Targeted Support is working well in Network 2
• Rota software is still the biggest problem.
• A lot of time and energy is spent on getting rotas out on time.
• When will service Co’s be able to access the software?
• Difficult to recruit Support Co’s. Some Support Workers are not interested in the extra responsibility.

The IT Co-ordinator has been asked to put the rota software on the computers in satellite offices first and then in the schemes. However there are some technical problems with our current system. The ‘pipes’ are not big enough!

The group were informed that due to lack of interest internally, we have tried advertising Support Co vacancies at the Job Centre. This was very successful in Network 5 even though the jobs are ‘temporary’. This also means that new staff who meet the criteria but have not yet completed their probationary period can apply as external candidates.We are trying this again with Support Co vacancies for Grovesend.

Update – we were not so successful this time. Although at least six applications were sent out, the only one returned is from a new member of staff who meets the criteria.

Response Workers and Response Service

It has been agreed that we can look at recruiting response workers in two Networks that are more or less fully staffed. Response Workers should be employed to cover planned absences and contracted to an individual Network. The plan is to employ two x 20 hour response workers per Network. There is a separate job description for these posts.

Meanwhile, the Service Development Manager is putting together a paper on a ‘Response Service’ and will share this with Team Co-ordinators.

The group were informed that the Local Authority in Swansea is wiling to give us funding to set up an out of hours response service offering night time response to other agencies as well as our own. Due to the working time directive and the result of a recent test case, ‘sleep-in’ duties may need to be converted to working hours and the Local Authority would prefer to fund a new response service as it would be very expensive to convert ‘sleep ins’ to ‘wakeful’ shifts.

A discussion followed. It was agreed that any new service should be staffed and managed separately so that it does not affect our day to day service. We also need to think of an alternative job title to avoid confusion.

Long Term Absence

Team Co’s requested that they be kept informed of any long term absence within the Team Co group so that they can cover any planned training sessions, On Call etc

Induction Training

The group were informed that the Team Co’s have been discussing the problem of staff who are unable to attend induction training due to other commitments or flexible working and therefore cannot successfully complete their probationary period.

Several Team co’s have agreed to look at delivering basic training packages at weekends or evenings. Details of the discussion can be found in the minutes of this morning’s meeting.

A discussion followed. The issue of staff training was raised at a recent Management Committee meeting. Team Co’s to discuss their plans with the Staff Development Manager.

The group were asked whose role it is to ensure staff attend training sessions. It was noted that staff attendance on training is an ongoing problem concerning ALL staff. For example, recent Support Co training sessions have been poorly attended and in some cases sessions have had to be cancelled

• Next Meeting - 14th January 2009 - 10am-11.30am - Resource Room

Team Co's meeting 16th July 2008

Previous Minutes and Matters Arising

On Call & Additional Hours

The Excessive Hours Working Group meets tomorrow and the Temporary Director said it was time to summarise the work done so far as some staff are still working too many hours.

A sheet is to be added to the On Call pack to record the reasons for authorising any extra hours staff are asked to cover at short notice.

Excessive hours worked during the last quarter were the highest for a while and the CSSIW will be asking for an explanation.

Temporary Operations Manager Post

The role of temporary Operations Manager will continue at the moment as we do not know when the Director will be returning to work. It was acknowledged that this has a knock on effect on other temporary posts in the Operations department.

Targeting Support Action Plan

Targeted Support in networks 4 and 7 has been delayed for three months. The action plan has been amended.

Team Co Data Base

The group were asked if everyone was using the paper based system as discussed at the July Forum.

Personal Safety Alarms

Everyone was reminded that personal alarms are still available especially for staff who are required to travel around on their own. Staff should contact the Community Services Officer (WE) to arrange to collect them.

New Agenda Items

Job Fair – September 2008

The next ‘Get a Job Day’ will be held on Wednesday 24th September 2008 at The Dragon Hotel between 11am – 5pm. It was agreed that we need to assess our recruitment needs and decide if it’s worthwhile taking part in the Job Fair this time.

Everyone was asked to comment on the calibre of new candidates as there has been a noticeable increase in problems with staff during the probationary period.

Most agreed that the quality of recent applications had improved and that many new applicants have some previous experience and some are NVQ qualified. A discussion followed and the following points were made:-

• Good staff have had their probation extended due to lack of training.
• Induction training doesn’t fit in with flexible working.
• Difficult to track ability when staff move around a lot. i.e.Targeted support
• Are we cutting corners due to other pressures? Do we give the required support?
• It’s difficult to terminate the employment of unsuitable staff if we haven’t offered appropriate support.
• A considerable amount of time is spent on the rota software leaving less time to be at schemes observing and training staff.
• Unsuitable staff may be the result of ‘panic’ recruiting – the latest recruits seem to be of a better standard (at induction)
• A recent advert through the Job Centre for Support Co-ordinators with a relevant qualification ( Network 5) attracted a lot of interest, even though the job was advertised as ‘temporary’

We need to look at why we’ve had problems with some staff and how to avoid them in future.

Pensions

At the Service Co Forum on June 10th, The Personnel Manager responded to a collective written complaint about an inequality of pension provision. Team Co’s wanted to know if the existing pension provision will change.

The Service Co Forum was used as an opportunity for the Personnel Manager and the acting temporary Director to officially respond to the complaint via a presentation (See Service Co Forum minutes for details)

The Government are moving towards the introduction of compulsory pensions by 2012 and the Consortium will be undertaking a review of all current pension provision. This was discussed with Unison at the JCC meeting last week. The acting temporary Director cannot say that pensions will not change in the future but everyone will be kept informed.

The Consortium is currently looking into the suggestion made by Service Co-ordinators;-

• To review the employer’s contribution to pension schemes and to see if the gap between the contributions made to the final salary pension scheme and other pension schemes can be narrowed.

On-Call

Due to technical difficulties, On Call managers were unable to access the rota software over the weekend and the internet was down. It has been suggested that paper copies of rota’s are handed out at On Call handover meetings.

It was pointed out that we don’t have copies of the old format rota’s anyway so would it make a lot of difference. Also there would be a lot of paper wastage. The suggestion was noted but after discussion the group decided not to take it any further.

Access to satellite offices was also discussed. This should be discussed with individual Contract Managers.

Mobile Phones

Since the change from 02 to Orange, poor coverage in some areas is causing a lot of problems for the On Call service. Reception is poor, there is difficulty in hearing and staff are having to repeat themselves or we are missing calls completely. Can we change back to 02? This will be discused with the Business Manager.

Since the Forum, the Business Manager has been contacted to tell him about the problems with Orange and asked if it would be possible to have a small contract with another supplier for On Call phones. The Business Manager agreed there was a problem and will look into other options quickly.

Volunteers to Review Targeted Support

The group were asked for volunteers to be involved in a review of Targeted Support, looking at different aspects such as rota’s, roles and responsibilities etc.  The volunteers will be contacted with more details soon.

Next Meeting

• 15th October 2008 - 1pm - 2pm - Resource Room

Team Co’s meeting 16th April 2008

UNISON Learning Representatives (ULR’s)

A Housing Support Co-ordinator (HSC) gave a short presentation on the role of the ULR’s. There are currently three ULR’s.

A question and answer discussion followed. The role is being promoted through the different Forums, Network meetings etc and asked Team Co’s to also help spread the word. There are two UNISON open days planned for Swansea and Neath & Port Talbot in May and June and the Learning Reps will have a stand there.

Previous Minutes and Matters Arising

Job Fair – 20th February 2008

A number of Service Co’s and a Contract Manager attended the February Job Fair and although it was an enjoyable day, only managed to recruit two or three staff. Need to give some thought to recruitment needs before future events.

Identity Cards/Name Tags

Clear identity badge holders and clips or neck cords for use at external events are available.

On Call & Additional Hours

Following the suggestions made at the last forum, a working group has been set up to look at possible solutions.

The ‘Additional hours’ working group needs to meet more frequently as something needs to be put in place to tackle the problem of staff working excessive hours.

A.O.B.

Temporary Operations Manager Post

A Contract Manager has been appointed to the above post and she will be taking over from the current Operations Manager on 1st May.

There will be some Network changes as a result of this. The cover arrangements for Network 6 will be finalised next week.

Targeting Support Action Plan

It has been decided to slow down the implementation of targeted support in Swansea so there have been a few changes to the Action Plan. Targeted Support in Networks 1 & 3 has been postponed until a later date. Implementation in Networks 3 & 7 will go ahead as planned.

The use of the Rota Software and the introduction of Targeted Support are NOT linked so Team Co-ordinators in Networks 1 & 3 should still attend the software training as planned. The plan is that all rotas will be produced using the software. A Rota Software Policy is being produced. Service Co-ordinators will be included in the training.

Team Co Data Base

Team Co’s not yet involved in Targeted Support should continue to enter information onto the database every month.

A paper format has been devised for recording hours delivered which is given to a Contract Manager monthly. This will be presented at the Contract Managers’ meeting tomorrow. We will also look at ways of recording the information under targeted support.

Operations Manager said that we need to know the number of hours we are NOT delivering and it is vital that we cross check support hours with the budget summary at least monthly. We need a system that is consistent across all Networks.

Personal Safety Alarms

There are a limited number of alarms available for staff that are required to travel around alone. Staff can arrange to collect their alarms from Community Services Officer at the Central Office.

Active Support (Reminder)

The next Active Support meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 14th May at 1.30pm.

Next Meeting

• 16th July 2008 - 1pm – 2pm

Team Co’s meeting 16th January 2008

Previous Minutes and Matters Arising

Smoke Free Workplace

The current Smoke Free Workplace Policy will not change and plans for a total smoking ban at the Consortium will not be implemented. After further discussion, the Management Committee have decided not to introduce a total ban as they feel this is not a priority for the Consortium at the moment. The policy will be reviewed in line with legislation. This information is to be relayed to staff.

The legislation does not apply to tenants in their own home but service users who smoke have agreed through the Tenants’ Lives Group not to smoke whilst being supported by staff. (See policy for more detail)

In at least one scheme, Care Managers have refused to agree to staff smoking in the garden of the property whilst on shift.

Job Fair – 20th February 2008

As discussed this morning, the Team Co-ordinator meeting & active support training on the 20th of next month cannot be re-arranged so Service Co-ordinators will be asked to help out at the Job Fair. Everyone agreed to ask for volunteers in their Networks and forward the names to the Community Services Officer.

At the last Forum in July we were told that the Head of Community Solutions was negotiating to buy some exhibition stands that we could also use for recruitment.

Identity Cards/Name Tags

The Tenants Lives Sub Group are reviewing the design of staff identity cards and will feed back any suggestions. Some Team Co-ordinators favoured ID cards that can be worn on a cord around the neck. This was unlikely to be agreed due to the associated risk assessments. Also it may not be in keeping with our low key approach.

(We now have a box of clear name badge holders with clips and neck cords to be used as suggested above.)

On Call

There are real concerns that under Targeted Support there is no flexibility with shifts so there are no staff to second at short notice for ‘on call’. All issues will be discussed with the Chief Executive.

Additional Hours.

The discussion moved on to the problems of staff working additional hours and how we need to get back on track!

• Although the information input onto the Team Co-ordinator Data Base has helped, some staff are still working extra hours that have not been authorised by the Contract Manager or On Call Managers.
• Staff will often stay on to cover shifts - We rely on goodwill!
• Why do we need all the extra cover?
• A lot of shifts that need covering don’t go through On Call.
• Implementing the Sickness Policy has helped – examples were given.
• Support Worker sickness affects more than one scheme under Targeted Support making it much more complicated to cover the absence.
• Recruiting response workers who are managed by Team co-ordinators should help.
• We are still not recruited up to 100% in all Networks – the Job Fair should help.
• It was agreed that although hours will be lost in Swansea under Targeted Support, as an organisation we will never agree to operate at ‘unsafe’ levels.
• We need to focus on a solution now as the problem will grow as each Network goes through the process of Targeted Support.

Next Meeting

• 16th April 2008 - 1pm - 2pm