Hi everyone
I am writing this just before the european elections and enjoying the rampant speculation on radio 4 about who will do well and who won’t and, most importantly, what does it all mean? Many of you will be in the thick of it as I write so all I can do is say I hope it went welll and without hitch or unseemly behaviour at the polling stations (not from you of course!). Interestingly, if you look up the word Rampant on wikipedia you find an entry for a Korean film about a hero fighting Night demons (zombies), involving political hostages and overthrowing of dynasties – reviewers said ‘ it is a bland film that is marred by a predictable plot and cardboard characters’ – spooky!?
As Director of Training you will not be surprised that my note to you is about ….training! I am working through a programme of reviewing and updating our core set of courses (the ones we offer through the open programme we advertise on the website) to ensure the content is up to date but I am also starting to think about the future of our training offer and where it sits in the ADSO offer overall. So two things to watch out for:
There will be some changes to the way we charge for training places – we have not increased our fees since we were set up and with costs rising so quickly we do need to apply a small increase to our rates. I am developing proposals around this for the Board and will communicate them later on this year.
I would be interested to hear what you think about the training we offer and whether you feel we should take more advantage of e-learning and digital technologies. I am planning a discussion session at the end of the first day of the annual conference to seek views and hope to see some of you there. We get good feedback from our training and participants particularly value the opportunity to meet face to face with colleagues to discuss what’s happening, and learn from other approaches. Opportunities to do this are few and we would not want to lose those but we also want to be able to provide a varied offer where it adds value so I am carrying out some initial soundings over this year to identify issues and options.
Feel free to get in touch or request a discussion at your regional meetings to contribute thoughts and ideas and if you are coming to conference look out for the session and come along.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that ADSO now has a team of experienced consultants who are ready and able to undertake governance and constitutional reviews. Contact John Austin or me for further details.
It was mental health week last week so we could remind colleagues of the importance to speak out to colleagues or to whoever they feel comfortable with to seek help or just to offload. Similarly, try to make time to relax and unwind. Getting that ever challenging work life balance is important. A number of authorities ran events for staff which we thoroughly support.
Here is the link to the website, which whilst past has useful information counted within it.
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/your-mental-health
And finally, a quick update from Sue Keogh who many of you will know and who still leads on the our qualifications. Sue tells me that SW Councils held a standardisation day for all their Assessors last Friday. A number of ADSO Assessors attended and that it was a productive day, sharing resources and tips on assessment as well as carrying out a couple of standardisation activities and discussing how to use the online portfolio system effectively. Sue Keogh will be contacting those who were unable to attend to discuss options for carrying out standardisation of assessment and facilitating networking opportunities for our Assessors.
Best Wishes
Susan Biddle
Director of Training