Training Programme
As you will know we had to suspend our open training programme at the end of last year to enable us to secure a new training support provider. This we achieved and we intended to re-start our programme in June 2020 – and then there was CO-VID. Since then we have been assessing our capacity to move to online training – sounds easy but as you will have discovered with moving to remote meetings, there are lots of issues and challenges to smooth out – both in terms of the technology as well as in understanding the difference between face to face and on-line learning.
We have been focused on working out how to repurpose our open programme courses into participatory on-line learning where we can continue to offer the opportunity for you to access training with your peers, facilitated by our trainers who are all practitioners and experts in the field. Our intention is to be able to offer our first on-line programme in the next 3 months and the re-design work is underway for a number of our titles so that more can be offered thereafter.
We will let you know when we are ready to take bookings and will give you more information as and when it is available. East Midlands Councils are supporting us in this transformation and we have also been working with LLG to develop a programme of webinars to compliment the more participatory offer.
At present trainers are working on the following areas – but we have yet to set dates to run them so watch this space.
- Council and its Governance
- Structures and Functions
- Meetings procedures and minute taking.
Members Forum
Good to see you continuing to support each other via the Members Forum with a mix of very specific individual requests for support and more generally applicable threads which seek to compare approaches. I was interested to see the developing threads seeking advice and to compare notes on supporting remote meetings and running hybrid meetings. We are having to work in very new ways and the Members Forum is a great way of connecting with colleagues to benchmark new approaches. A good range of people also responded to an enquiry around mandatory training for members with John Austin giving ADSO’s position and our recommendation around Member training in the draft Code of Conduct.
We are all becoming more comfortable in working remotely and the forum offers the opportunity to continue networking and sharing good practice. Don’t forget to use it.
Survey on remote meetings
As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the LGA (with the support of ADSO, LLG. SOCITM and others) issued a survey to all authorities asking for views on remote meetings and their continuation beyond May 2021. John Austin met with the LGA and other partners last week and we are pleased to say that there was a fantastic response to the survey – over 750 responses to date! The survey is still open for a few more days so hurry if you wish to add your voice to this important matter. We will bring you more news as soon as possible. You can access the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/M5KQYL8.
Susan Biddle, Director of Training