Rob's Weekly Round Up

23 May 2025

Hi Everyone, 

I’ll start this week by giving a shout out to all the schools, staff and children who took part in a hugely successful Gwyl Fach y Fro last weekend.  The festival was really well attended, the sun was shining and there was a wonderful atmosphere on the island.  Da iawn pawb.   

On the same theme, the National Urdd Eisteddfod takes place next week in Margam Park. Best wishes to all the schools and children who will be taking part throughout the week – Pob lwc i chi gyd.  For those teachers and school staff who are visiting the Eisteddfod with their schools – good luck and enjoy!  

This week I would also like to highlight some of the important recent achievements of colleagues across the organisation. 

Staff from the Vale were celebrated for their exceptional contributions to the health and social care sector at the Excellence in Care Awards in Cardiff. 

The annual ceremony - presented by ITV’s Kate Lewis at Cardiff City Stadium – honoured care workers from both Local Authority teams and external partner organisations who have completed Health and Social Care qualifications over the past year. 

Their dedication and compassion for the people they support is vital to how we seek to operate care services in the Vale, and these awards are a celebration of the positive impact they make across our communities every single day. Llongyfarchiadau mawr! 

Similarly, another group of colleagues were recognised during a different awards ceremony last week as part of the Regional Partnership Board’s ‘Stronger Together: Celebrating our Partnership’ conference in Cardiff.  

Miles Utting, the Vale’s Older Person’s Resource Centre Manager, received the Co-Production Award after being nominated by Andy Cole. 

Further to this, Miles was also part of the Dementia Friendly Vale group that won an award, as nominated by Abbi Williams from the RPB and was also nominated for the Empowering Community Award by Versha Sood of the RPB. 

Keith Ingram – who is the Council’s Autism Lead - was honoured with the prestigious RPB Chair’s Award, nominated by Linda Woodley. A special mention also goes to the Vale Integrated Discharge Service, who were nominated for the Chair’s Award by Jason Bennett. 

Congratulations to Miles, Keith, and all who were nominated for these awards – it is truly wonderful to see so many Vale colleagues recognised in this way – your successes demonstrate the passion you not only have for your own roles, but for the residents you support across the county. Da iawn i chi gyd! 

Speaking of recognition, Martine Booker-Southard and Sandra Saif from the Learning Links Team recently attended another celebration in much more regal surroundings at the Education and Skills Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. 

This event brought together representatives from various educational fields to honour their contributions to education across the United Kingdom. 

Speaking about her time at the event, Sandra said: ‘’It was a great honour to be invited to Buckingham Palace by His Majesty the King. The Garden Party was an amazing experience for myself and my daughter, and entering through the famous front gate was surreal. We were able to enjoy afternoon tea and explore the palace gardens in the blazing sun.  

“To be recognised alongside so many inspiring individuals in the field of education was deeply humbling. It was extra special being able to share this experience with Martine and her daughter. All in all, a truly amazing day that we will all cherish for a very long time.’’ 

Martine added: “It was a privilege to be invited to the Palace. I enjoyed the celebration of a range of education professionals. My highlight is still Sandra’s smile. It did not leave her face all day.” 

I’m glad to hear you both had a wonderful time at Royal Garden Party – a very fitting celebration of our education colleagues! 

In other news, this week also marked Dementia Action Week, with a number of events taking place across the Vale to raise awareness, offer support, and challenge the stigma around dementia. 

Dementia Friendly Barry and Dementia Friendly Penarth held open events with the help of the Dewis Team and other volunteers to ‘Turn Barry and Penarth Blue’ for dementia awareness. The tunnel on Hood Road in Barry was also light up blue for the cause. 

These events are part of a larger scheme across the county to help our communities become more accessible to those living with dementia. 

One way of supporting these efforts is to become Dementia Friends – an initiative led by the Alzheimer’s Society – and is something that our own Social Care Information Team have recently undertaken. 

Dementia Friends aims to give people a better understanding of dementia and the small things we can all do to make a difference to the lives of people affected by the disease.  

By becoming a Dementia Friend at work or as a volunteer, you’ll be supporting people affected by dementia - including customers, colleagues or even friends; helping people to feel understood and supported and improving their experience.  

The Social Care Information Team are eager to encourage other departments throughout the Council to become dementia friends - as more and more of us do so, we can help residents with dementia feel understood and supported in their communities.  

Finally, I’d like to share the news that the Windows 11 rollout across our organisation is now complete! 

It was a gargantuan task - since launching on 24 February, more than 1,750 laptops have now successfully moved to Windows 11.  

Thanks to your willingness to adapt, dive into the support materials, and get on board with the changes, the transition went smoothly - and because so many of you installed the upgrade promptly and familiarised yourselves with the new system, we were able to speed things up—bringing the final groups forward and finished ahead of schedule.  

It also helped to ease the pressure on IT support, which made a big difference.  

As we get started on delivering our Vale 2030 Corporate Plan, this successful rollout is a great reminder of what’s possible when we embrace new systems and ways of working.   

‘Being the best council we can be’ means embracing new digital tools and supporting our people so we can keep improving how we do things.  

Change is part of the journey - and staying flexible and adaptable will help us keep moving forward as an organisation. 

Thank you very much for your efforts again this week.  

For those of you not in work, have a relaxing and enjoyable few days off over the bank holiday weekend. 

Diolch o galon, 

Rob