I was hoping that we would have the blog up and running by now but, as so often happens, there have been some hold-ups slightly beyond our control! So, I’ve decided to do a catch-up newsletter to let everyone know what’s been happening and what’s planned in the near future. I will keep you posted about the blog and how that’s developing.
So, this month we have information about;
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Update Training on Saturday 26th March
We will be running a whole-day training workshop for volunteers on Saturday 26th March – venue to be decided but it will be either in St Albans or Hemel. Please put this date in your diaries and I will send out more information nearer the time. The day will be facilitated by Sue Banwell-Moore, whom many of you know as our inspirational trainer.
Some suggestions for content on the day have already been made, and I would be happy to hear other thoughts. These are;
I have wanted to make these training sessions a regular feature of volunteer support and development, but sadly we haven’t been able to offer regular updates due to financial constraints and the need to train new volunteers on an annual basis. We are now moving into a new era where initial volunteer training will be much less frequent. I hope, therefore, that many of you will be able to take this great opportunity of honing your skills and getting together with other team members to share experiences and good practice.
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Volunteer Coordinator Role
I’m delighted to announce that Polly Walker will be taking on this role from about mid-March. Polly has recently joined the service as a volunteer. She has a background in education and is a trained mediator with experience of training others in mediation skills.
Polly will be liaising with me to keep in more regular touch with everyone, to find out your training and support needs, to plan training events across the year so that we have regular updates and opportunities to discuss cases and to coordinate Peer Support Groups, which have not met for some time now. Because of the gap in setting these up, I would expect the first set of meetings for 2011 to be in April/May.
I acknowledge that I have been unable to devote much time to supporting the team as I have been very caught up in organising a couple of events (in schools and the Workplace Mediation event) and in writing funding bids. I recognise that supporting a team which does not naturally come together very often is challenging. Any thoughts or suggestions from you are always welcome. Polly will be making contact to find out what the main concerns and suggestions are and this will inform the plan as we move into the next few months
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Future Plans & Proposals
As you are all aware, the future for services such as ours is looking increasingly uncertain and, as I write, there is still no real news about our funding from April 2011 onwards. You have received messages from Arran, Macarena and Jan to outline some of the issues we are facing and the Board will be looking at possible options for the future at its next meeting in early March.
These options will include some changes to staffing at the office and I will circulate decisions about that once the meeting has taken place. To reassure you, it is hoped that we will not have to reduce overall staffing levels in the next financial year but there may be changes in areas of responsibility and hours of work.
Thanks to those of you who have responded with ideas and suggestions for the way forward. These will be picked up in more detail after the Board meeting and will probably require a small group of us to work on plans in more detail – so let me know if you would like to be involved in that planning work.
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Workplace Mediation
We are now only a week away from our consultation/launch event called ‘Let’s Talk’ to which we have invited many supporters and funders, as well as mediators. We have had a good response and look forward to an interesting and informative morning.
Following on from this, Michele Wheeler will be putting together a short report for the Trustees on what has been learned during this pilot phase and how she sees the future of this service developing. Initial indications are that there is interest in using Mediation Hertfordshire for workplace disputes, especially amongst the voluntary and not-for-profit sector.
I will write more about the event and decisions for the future in the next Newsletter – or maybe even the blog by then!
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A Farewell to Julia
A number of us from Mediation Herts attended Julia’s funeral, held last week at the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Watford. Macarena, Marie, Penelope and I joined hundreds of mourners from Julia’s family and church congregation and found out more about her extraordinary life and all the different organisations and causes which Julia was involved with.
Thank you to the many of you who sent messages via the office, and I know that our presence at this gathering was a sign of our respect and thanks for the work Julia did for our service users over the years.
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