Information and Referral Subcommittee Meeting

September 16th 2011

Present:Absent:

Skip StuckJanet Fender

Lois CarrDawn Devereaux

Colleen PritoniDarlene Spencer

Manuela DaCosta

Kerry BickfordGuests:

Conni DilegoTony Nogueira

Alicia BuggsJudy Geagan

Agenda:

  • Website
  • Finite Tasks
  • Ongoing tasks
  • Tony’s contribution
  • Volunteers’ work
  • Materials
  • DCF Custody vs. Probate Court
  • Social Worker Tip Sheets
  • Other

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  • Website:

Immediate tasks:

Tony will continue to be our man to guide us and advise us regarding the website.

Tony and Judy will be meeting Saturday October 1st at 1:00 in Wareham. The purpose of this meeting is for Tony to train Judy on how to input information in the website/maintenance.

Tony will check with Google how much it will cost to advertise the website in Google. If we don’t advertise when people google our name it doesn’t come up easily

New events will continue to be posted by Tony until the new volunteer – Judy - is trained.

We need to send to Kerry the subcommittee reports. Kerry already has the I&R report and Manuela will send Kerry the Local Support subcommittee report.

We should have a press release to announce our website and the new Commissioners. Kerry will look into it with the Boston Globe.

We should continue to document the calls that we receive through the Cape Cod coalition and periodically send a request for support to the Governor.

Intermediate tasks:

Tony continues the work on how to provide the website with a program that utilizes Google maps for the users of the website to locate the resources they are seeking.

Alicia, according to her report, entered about 350 resources into the data base. Tony will check out these resources and if they have pertinent information we should think about adding the resource seeking tab.

Long Term tasks:

The content update is a long term commitment. Kerry will be the person in charge of vetting the information that goes into the website.

We should have a deadline for entering information such as having all the information in the first week of the month.

  • Materials:

Colleen will send the final iteration for the CDF vs Court for Manuela to give it to Pat Moffet for the graphics.

Colleen will have the tip sheets for Social Workers done by December. Kerry and Lois are going to send Colleen an email with some tips about what they know and heard about grandparents’ involvement with DCF and what is helpful

  • Other

We have now ten people in our subcommittee. It is a very large subcommittee. We propose some changes. DTA representation could go to the Finance subcommittee (Janet Fender and Dawn Devereaux). Also Alicia stated that her interest is more aligned with the Finance subcommittee. She will talk with John Lepper. Conni will go to the Legal subcommittee. She will talk to Lynn and support her in the work of that subcommittee. Manuela will call Janet Fender and assess her interest in being part of the Finance subcommittee. Conni is working on the book mark. She asked us to read it through and see if we find any last changes. She will have them printed and bring them back to the Commission.

In a conversation after the official meeting, Kerry suggested that we might want to consider using the graphic that appears on the “You Are Not Alone” one pager on all of the pieces that the I&R Committee produces. Along with the identification that the Information and Referral Subcommittee created it, we are also recommending including the year it was produced. If each committee is able to identify work in a similar, recognizable way, it helps organize the work more efficiently. We will also identify updates on the bottom of each piece in the following way: EXAMPLE:

Created by the Commission on the Status of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren/Information and Referral Subcommittee/2010/updated in 2011.