BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF PLAY THERAPISTS LTD
MEETING OF BOARD DIRECTORS
LCA
9th May 2015
12.30 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Minutes
Present
Pete Ayling – Chair
Harriet Armstrong – Comms & PR Chair, Vice Chair
Shelagh McFarlane – Scotland Rep
Jo Hill – Wales Rep
Ruth Lazarus – Professional Practice, Vice Chair
Jenny Harrison – Treasurer
Helen Gedge – Research Rep
Ruth Watson – T & E Chair
Andrew O’Mahony – Lay Member
Suzy Lambert – Lay Member
Apologies
Chris Warren Adamson – Lay Member
Clare Carbis – Wales Rep
Sarah Hickson – Student Rep
Judith James – Company Secretary
Audrey Lee Membership
Julie Bingham
Attending:
by Janet Steel
Pete Welcomed Suzy Anderson to her first Board meeting and the Board introduced themselves.
1. MINUTES:
From March 2015 meeting – These were accepted and signed.
2. MATTERS ARISING:
Page 2 – Overseas members on the Register. The notes at the start of the page state that where a Listing shows an overseas location, that person is NOT part of the PSA register agreed that we need to get PSA OK on that as part of the renewal process
Action: RL
Policies – Noted that they must all have the New Logo, this is being implemented.
Chairs Job Description – PA is working on this
Action: PA
CPD Logs – T & E email details to JS today
Action: JS
Chair of Sub Comms Roles - T & E is done, others need to be completed ASAP.
Action: AL/HA/RL
Finance – Jenny has sent an email re monthly payments – this needs to be re-sent as nothing heard.
Action: JS
3. PSA
PSA have been consulting current accrediated bodies about their own role, asking interested parties to take part in some video conferencing, however this has been difficult for BAPT to accommodate as al Board members are working.
PSA also advised about their own Annual Conference, on 1st/2nd July, Rl to investigate what the Conference is about to see if we need to think about attendance
Action: RL
Board agreed to review these requests on an individual basis and if appropriate to try to get a Board member to attend.
One outstanding item is still the re-write of the Professional Conduct/Complaints procedure, which needs to be done before re-accreditation. We also need to re-advertise specifically for a lay member for that committee.
PSA Re-accreditation – 11th July planned for this – JH & SM unavailable.
4. AGM Preparation
Board Members to retire: We need 5 members to retire -
Pete Ayling
Ruth Watson
Helen Gedge standing for re-election - Nominated by Pete, seconded by Ruth L
Jo Hill to be elected to Board as she was co-opted last AGM – Nominated Shelagh, seconded Pete
Sarah Hickson standing for re-election – Nominated by Harriet, Seconded by Ruth W
This means there are 2 Board Members to be replaced.
Chair Role –
It is usual that the Vice Chair(s) would step up when Chair retires, however, Harriet advised the Board that she is expecting her 2nd baby and will therefore not be able to Stand. Ruth L felt that she could not take the role on completely, but was happy to remain as Vice Chair with Harriet albeit Harriet being on maternity leave later in the year.
No one else was prepared to stand as Chair, so the Board agreed to continue without a nominated chair, with a revolving Chairs position at each Board meeting and shared responsibility for the role.
RL will continue to be the contact for PSA
With regard to PSA Re-Accreditation, It was agreed that the re-accreditation document will be sent to every Board member and that sections will be reviewed and completed by Individuals in accordance with their Committee roles or experience.
Judith James standing as Company Sec for Final Year
Need to ask Members for nominations/volunteers to become Company secretary, initially shadowing Judith for the year and then elected next AGM.
As far as the AGM itself is concerned, we will run in a similar way to last couple of years, structured part with all the business to be completed, followed by updates from Chair and Sub Comms - a little piece about what’s been going on and chance to ask for new Sub Comm members, to include the advice from PSA about new Logo & use of wording etc from Ruth L, then a meet the board time, with a glass of wine.
Action: Sub Comm Chairs
5. Policies
Finance policy agreed
6. SUB COMMITTEES
Research
Helen Gedge advised that following a visit to Uni of S Wales, details of their research group have been passed to Sue Elmer and she has been in contact with the Course leaders with a view to moving contact forward.
Membership
Portfolio – Board has been asked to consider again the situation regarding Personal therapy for Non BAPT trained PT’s applying under the portfolio Route – Sonia Murrays notes (See appendix A) suggest 3 outcomes.
The Board discussed this at length and after initially feeling that a 60 hour minimum should remain, agreed that there is a need for BAPT to become more open, but not at the expense of reducing its standards; the aim should be not to have a strict limit but perhaps to try to evaluate the outcome of any Personal Therapy that applicants have had on their practice.
Pete will discuss this further with A/RL/HG/AL/SM with a view to put together a discussion paper to be sent to Members PRIOR to the AGM, so that a full discussion can happen with a view to a final decision being made and potentially voted on at AGM.
Action: PA
We will need to check he position with PSA and also note that as an organisation we reserve the right not to award membership, and that the panel’s decision is final.
Also raised was the possibility of opening a Corporate Membership Category, we have had several interest is this – Board asked the Membership team to look at how this might be done, what benefits etc could be agreed (number of copies of mag etc)
Action: AL & Committee
An issue that was raised by Full Member Petro Solle – she had wanted to apply to join a Conselling Directory but was refused as they only accepted PTUK qualified PT’s as recognised with PSA regiatration. Advised Petro to go back to the organisation and get them to look at PSA details, which they have done and are going to consider her application at next review, so we believe this is now OK.
Wales
Jo reported from Clare that the Cardiff support Group continues to meet, with Jo samuels co-ordinating this.
Jo herself is meeting with last Wlaes rep, Val fairlie next week and hopes to discover what Val was working on with Schools and local Government.
The Windfall Centre have David Taransey as their August Conference speaker, replacing Sue Jennings.
Scotland
Shelagh reported that the current support groups were going well and meeting regularly.
Helen Forrester has recently been granted Charity status and funding for her ‘Playbase’ project.
WithKIds are offering to fund a PT training course and are in contact with 2 Uni’s about this. They are looking at BAPT accreditation and the Uni’s have asked for Market research to be completed, to guage interest, and so 3 open sessions have been set up, which are already full, with further sessions being planned – pointing to a lot of interest! The view currently is with the Uni’s onside, a start around January 2016.
Shelagh is to re-join T & E sub Comm to provide contact between the Uni’s and BAPT.
Training and Education
Re-Accreditation - Visits have been made to both Hong Kong & S Wales regarding the re-accreditation of both.
HK – Course re-accrediated, however they advise that the course will close after the current cohort complete their training, as a result of low applications, so just one cohort qualifying
S Wales – also re-accredited following the visit. The course is doing very well and the 2 leaders are working well to maintain that.
A couple of issues were raised –
Library - books can only be loaned for 3 day maximum, fine is then £10 p/day – this is prohibitive for the PT students who are only at the Uni for 2 days so inevitably their loan needs are for longer periods – the course are investigating this.
Writing up – some of the Placements do not allow audio/video recording which makes it difficult for students to complete their writing up – RW has again asked the course to look at this.
Race & Culture – Noted that they toys available didn’t reflect the wider community – again this was raised with the Course who will review.
Re-accreditation has been agreed subject to these items, T & e will be writing to the Uni to confirm.
T & E have asked to have a box at Conference for suggestions from members re short courses.
Supervisors – The committee has agreed to review applications for the time being, following Lisa Waycott’s resignation – applications to be sent to Liz Hill & Helen Gedge. We need to note Website that further applications will not be reviewed until Sept meeting.
A final year Student has requested advice regarding change in supervision to Skype as her current supervisor, Sue Jennings, is away from UK for the rest of the year. Sub Committee has agreed that in the circumstances this is OK, but that the Student should also have some face to face sessions in the UK.
The Board aksed T & E committee to look at the situation re skype Supervsion as a whole as it will become more a part of what members will want.
Action: HG to take back to T & E
Language requirements – Lisa Gordon Clark has asked T & E to support raising these to EHLT level 7 – however S wales are happy that it remains at Level 6 as it currently is. This will be discussed at the conveners meeting on June 5th.
Notre Dame – When BAPT accrediated the course, there were some supervisors who were not PT’s used by the course, but they were approved as BAPT Supervisors at the time – they are asking if they care still listed as BAPT Supervisors in order that they can offer Supervision training – T & E confirm that they are still registered.
Communication and PR and
Harriet advised that Facebook was still going well. She has recently asked for volunteers to do Conference reviews, and is reminding people to book for Conference and will add AGM.
Magazine – Board needs to get more engaged with Magazine, suggested this was part of our Awayday planning and invite Mary & Nina to attend.
Professional Practice
Ruth L is going to get a working party together to look at issue of Public Engagement, Andrew O’Mahony will join that group.
She has laso completed a Members Toolkit from the PSA Toolkit to explain about the use of the new twin logo and worgings that should be used. It was agreed that Ruth will put together a brief presentation for the AGM, which will then be issued to Non attending members and on the Website.
Working with adopted Children – New Ofsted rules MAY require PT’s working directly with children to register with Ofsted as an Adoption Support Agency (ASA) . This doesn’t apply if the individual is contracted by an organisation that is already an ASA, and does not apply to schools, so this may require individual registration. JS has details of the latest document from Ofsted, she will circulate so that we can get something on the website & in magazine for members.
Action: JS.
7. Finance
JH present her summary of the financial situation, we received a rebate for Gift Aid for period 6/4/14 – 5/4/15 for just over £6,000. We need to try & encourage more Members to tick that box!
HSBC remain as our Bank of Choice – Agreed by Board.
It was also agreed that Sarah Hickson is to be added as the second of two signatories, alongside Treasurer Jennifer Harrison, following Ruth Watson’s retirement from the Board. We continue to require just one signatory per transaction.
Action: JH
Card Payments – these cost us per transaction, we must therefore add additional fee to any transactions paid by card, and warn payers that this is the case. JH to confirm % figures to add to JS.
Action: JH & JS
8. AOB
Away Day – looked at options at Hilton Leeds was agreed. JS to confirm
11th July Meeting – those who can attend are currently – Andrew, Ruth L, Helen, Harriet,
Meeting ended at 4.10pm
Signed……………………………….. Date…………………….
(Chair)
Dates of future meetings:
5th June AGM
11th July
12th September
14th November – Away day