Here’s to 2022 being another year of successful co-operating, learning, growing and offering great care and support in our community!
We were really pleased that many of you were able to join us at our AGM in November 2021. We want to share what we discussed, agreed and are taking forward with all of our members! You can have a look at the agenda and reports from our Chair, Secretary and Nominated Individual, read the minutes as well as go through both our official accounts and our snapshot of ‘to-date’ finances.
At the meeting we also heard from Danielle, our Registered Manager, who shared a brief overview of how we have grown since March 2021 when we started offering care and support in the community.
Our Board has grown too – we welcomed Tracy and Jon as part of the team – you can read more about/from each of the directors in the introductions as well as in the blogs some of the board members have done (search ‘team spotlight’ at the top of the page). And since there is more of us now, 9 actually, the number of board members we have originally planned for, we’ve revisited how we share the many of tasks, jobs, duties and actions that we want and need to take forward and keep an eye on…
In the past year or so, some elements of our care co-op have moved forward and developed faster than others, some things we’ve had to park and some things have cropped up or offered themselves that we followed. We’ve learnt loads. And we keep doing so…
…and so here is how we’re taking the workings of the board forward – let’s start with a reminder of our structure in which the user members are always at the core of what we do.
While we’re not fully mirroring the diagram, this picture captures the different key elements that we want and need to be working on to make sure that we not only provide care that is safe, person centred, innovative and overall great, but that we also keep learning and growing.
Sue, who is our Nominated Individual, oversees our regulated services work and also liaises with external partners; Jean offers mentoring and wellbeing support to our staff team and Tracy offers staff as well as service delivery support, including auditing and systems review.
Veronika, our Sharing Care project coordinator and Deputy Chair, works with Steph, the Membership Secretary and marketing lead, alongside Tony to develop our community engagement. The focus is on getting better in staying in touch with our members throughout the year, sharing opportunities to co-operate and engage with the care co-op. We also want to streamline our membership offer and systems to support the co-op’s embedding in the community and connection to local businesses while keeping our user members’ wellbeing needs and aspirations at the heart of this process.
Graham, our Chair as well as IT lead and co-op & beyond networking go-to-person, works alongside Jan, who is the society’s Secretary, and Jon, who is the Treasurer, to oversee, lead and monitor our business and financial workings.
While the board meets monthly, our sub-groups which focus on the specific elements of work meet in between and so do our so-called action groups. Having devolved smaller and more agile groups which include board members and staff (and in the future hopefully also volunteer members and user members) allows us to co-operate more effectively and support each other on resolving some of the challenges and coming up with solutions.
The whole board is of course working closely with the staff team, with Danielle and Clare, our Finance and Business Support Officer, as well as with wider care staff team through team meetings, staff consultation meetings and through other specific project work – e.g. Sharing Care learning project.
There are also several other supporters and members who have been supporting our work, contributing their specialist skills and expertise and while there have been many who have joined us along the line, let’s mention Amanda (connected to the regulated services delivery), Gabriel (offering financial support with budgeting and reporting) and Mark (supporting our marketing efforts) at this point.
Follow our journey on social media channels, get in touch with questions and queries and look out for further updates about our journey to making great care possible through co-operation in Colne Valley and beyond.