Weekly Round-Up with Tom Bowring
Dear Colleagues,
With Rob on his second of two weeks of a well-deserved summer break, I’m really pleased to have the opportunity to write this message and I hope that you’ve had a good week.
Last week, Lance talked about some of the important steps that we as a Council are taking to support our colleagues with the rising cost of living with the increase in pay for grade one and two colleagues to the real living wage rate. As a Strategic Leadership Team, we have been discussing the impact that these pressures are having on many of our colleagues and we are committed to doing more to support people.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been working alongside colleagues from across the organisation on a Cost-of-Living project team to look at what more we can do for citizens and colleagues. You might have noticed the Cost-of-Living banner that has been added on the front page of our website which gives access for our residents to of information on what services and advice they can access. From this week, too, there is more information for colleagues on Staffnet+ on Cost of Living & Well-being. We hope this information is useful and will be adding to it in the future. If you’ve any suggestions for other things we could include, I’d love to hear from you.
This kind of approach, where we bring people together from across the Council to tackle an issue by joining forces is one of my key take-aways from Coronavirus – Team Vale working at its best.
We’ve all seen the importance of looking after our well-being over the last couple of years, too. It was brilliant to hear from Sian Clemett-Davies this week about an event our Well-being Champions held at the Foodpod in Penarth recently. The Well-being Champions are another group who come together around a particular issue which in their case is to improve well-being opportunities for all colleagues. Sian reflected “This is the first time that Champions and staff have worked alongside the community in a well-being activity and it was enriching for all involved.
“We already know that being outdoors and working in nature can improve our wellbeing, but when we are giving back and helping our community the benefits are ten-fold”. I’ve heard excellent feedback from those who were there on the day and would like to give the whole team a big congrats for their efforts – both on this project and the wider programme of well-being activities they work so hard to put on for colleagues.
The Staff Survey launched last week and already nearly 500 colleagues have shared your views on a range of issues including well-being, working arrangements, cost of living and Project Zero. If you’ve not yet had a chance to complete the survey, please take a few minutes to share your thoughts. We will be using the information from the survey to shape our plans for the future, for example, how we use our office accommodation. Your views really do count.
Another example of Team Vale in action is our teams’ support for settling Ukrainian refugees safely in the Vale of Glamorgan. I know that very many colleagues across our services are involved in this incredibly important task and are going above and beyond in their endeavours.
I had an email recently from my colleague Richard Taylor in the Income Management team who along with colleagues has been making payments to Ukrainian families. Richard said “The reaction from the families has been very positive and this has made the task very rewarding both for colleagues and myself.
“Some of the families have clearly been through some quite traumatic circumstances but they have received a warm welcome. My Ukrainian language skills only stretch to ‘Dobroho ranku’ (‘Good morning’) and ‘Dobry den’ (‘Good afternoon’) but the families have appreciated my efforts and I have been told that my pronunciation of names/surnames has been pretty good on the whole!”
We’ve also had some lovely feedback this week from one of our school governors about the support being offered by the Council. “I wanted to say that Admissions, and particularly Rhiannon (Jones), have been helpful and supportive with finding a place for our 11 year old guest from Ukraine. In fact, the guidance and support from all Council departments has been faultless. Our guest started at a local school last week and the school has also been unbelievably welcoming. He is settled, happy and really enjoying being part of the school community. So, it is a huge well done and heartfelt thanks from his mother and myself”.
‘Dyakuyu tobi’ – thank you – to all those colleagues across the Council involved in supporting and welcoming people from Ukraine to the Vale of Glamorgan.
As we approach the end of the summer term for our schools, it was great to get an email from Paula Ham, Director of Learning & Skills, this week about three of our colleagues who have been nominated for an award as part of the annual Professional Teaching Awards Cymru. Julia Adamson from Cadoxton Primary School has been nominated for the Pupil (or Pupils’) Award for Best Teacher. Lucy Morgan, from Ysgol y Deri has been nominated for Teacher of the Year in a Secondary school. Nigel Bowie from the Youth Service has been nominated for the Youth Work in Schools award.
Paula said “I am very proud of all 3 members of staff. It is a major achievement to be nominated and shortlisted for these very important national awards. The Minister for Education and the Welsh Language has commented on the outstanding calibre of this year’s nominations and the importance of recognising the breadth of inspiring education professionals we have here in Wales. We are very fortunate that we have such outstanding professionals working with our children and young people in the Vale of Glamorgan”. Pob lwc to all of you on Sunday when I know Paula will be attending the awards ceremony and is very much looking forward to celebrating your successes together!
Last month was Pride Month which kickstarts a summer of events across the country. Pride is a celebration of people coming together in love and friendship, to show how far LGBTQ+ rights have come, and how in some places there's still work to be done.
As the Council’s Senior LGBT+ Champion on SLT, I had a chance to meet up with Tom Narborough, Chair of the GLAM network and our LGBT+ elected member Champion, Cllr Catherine Iannucci this week to talk about their ideas for the Council’s presence at Pride Cymru on Saturday 27th August. Colleagues from GLAM will be sharing more details in the next couple of weeks and it’d be brilliant to see lots of colleagues at what is a really important and fun event in Cardiff.
I hope you have a good weekend and enjoy the sunshine. Diolch for everything you do.
Tom