Minutes

South Wales – MINI SPIN – ESIS Center, Tuesday 15th May, 10AM

Present – Malcolm Topping - Caerphilly (Chair)

Alyson Hoskins – Blaenau Gwent

Nigel Stannard - Newport

Alex Morgan – Vale of Glamorgan

Samantha Harry – Cardiff

Gareth Evans – Vale of Glamorgan

Rachel Evans – Swansea

Phil Tipton – Merthyr

Nicola Hamilton - Monmouthshire

Chris Price – Homelessness Network Coordinator

  1. Apologies

Rufus Noy

Adele Robinson

Ian Stapleton

Gregg Round

Pam Toms

Chris Price - Homelessness and Supporting People – Joint Regional events

CP explained that three regional events were to be held at Newport on the 14th June, Llandeilo on the 19th June and Colwyn Bay on the 26th June, this was not to suggest that the mini spin regions should be altered, but that may be a topic for discussion at the regional events

An idea was given of the draft agenda, which as now been confirmed as:

  1. . Making the Connections’

Sara Harvey (WLGA) / Leighton Philips (WAG) / Susan Perkins (WLGA) deliver a presentation on the implications of the Beecham Agenda on how LA’s will work in future.

  1. ‘Making the connections between Homelessness and Supporting People’

Paul Webb and Simon Prothero discuss the implications of the Beecham agenda on Homelessness and Supporting People services, whether they should develop on a more regional basis and the likely impact of redistribution

  1. Current regional provision

Chris Price discusses services currently delivered across the region and what the likely implications of SP redistribution may be and its potential impact on the prevention of homelessness.

  1. Discussion on the presentations

Speakers to take questions from the floor

  1. Lunch
  1. What is the prevention agenda?

For the benefit of Supporting People managers and staff, a homelessness manager runs through the aims of the homelessness prevention agenda

  1. How does the Supporting People regime prevent homelessness?

For the benefit of homelessness managers and staff, a SP Manager discusses how SP contributes to the prevention of homelessness

  1. Breakout sessions into three groups

Discussion will centre on the following areas

  • What is a region? Which regions make most sense?
  • The opportunities of regional working
  • The threats of regional working

7. Feedback on discussions within each group

What key themes have been identified? How do we take things forward?

Further discussion followed on the agenda of the first joint meeting

between SPIN/Homeless network at the Media resource center on 16th July 2007 after lunch. The following agenda is now proposed.

Working with Health

Dr. Clare Cribb, (Consultant Psychiatrist Swansea NHS Trust), discusses the housing needs of her caseload and reports back on the results of a questionnaire undertaken with psychiatrists across Wales.

Mark Campisi, manager of the OASIS project in Swansea discusses how they are tackling the housing needs of those with mental health issues in the Swansea area

The Voluntary Sector Perspective

Carl Chapple (Cymorth Cymru) and Stephen Gamgee present findings in relation to recent research undertaken in relation to the health needs of homeless people

Breakout sessions

Regional groups to discuss the issues raised and consider how they can be included in their regional action plans

CP further discussed document produced by the (Re) Distribution sub group which tended to suggest that redistribution may be based on a ‘social care’ formula and be distributed on a regional basis following recent WAG documents recommendations about closer regional working such as Beecham.

Some provisional calculations suggested that SE Wales would benefit significantly whilst Cardiff would receive significantly less.

There was some concern that an open and informed debate did not seem to be occurring and that decisions were being made behind closed doors.

  1. Minutes of meeting 13th March 2007

LOCATIONOF MINI SPIN - ESIS - Darran has enquired about location, but there is no discount, it was therefore agreed that chairing LA will pay for the venue and look at recharging other authorities for a contribution, approx £8-10 per meeting.

Preparedness Feedback – Sam from Cardiff informed the group that an issue was identified with the tenancy support team not passing on 2% to providers. Main point of the feedback was that the Homelessness Network needed improvement. Only other point WAG raised was to request a SP Champion is elected in Cardiff.

Darren agreed to send the group a copy of draft RCT preparedness report and their response to eth issues raised

Concern was raised and agreed by the group that one-day is not enough to understand the detail of each team and can at best only give

  1. WLGA Toolkit

Tania is going to invite Caroline Humphries to July SPIN to discuss in general; each SP officer can make a decision as to its use. It is not mandatory and you could pick and choose the sections. WLGA and SHMG funded the activity. CH has offered to attend each Mini SPIN to discuss in detail. Toolkit can be used in part or whole depending on capacity of authority.

Proposal is for use is that local authorities could submit to appraisal using toolkit by officers from other authority SP team on a reciprocal basis (Pilot of Carmarthen involved Adele from Swansea).

There is little in eth way of external audit currently and adoption of such a process may assist in demonstrating SP teams capability for managing and administering grant.

  1. Feedback from Cymorth and SPIN exec meetings

SPIN Exec – Joy Kent and Mark Sheridan attended afternoon on the meeting, the redistribution paper was discussed and feedback that in principle there were no individual commitments. The paper will be discussed on Tues at SPIN however. Mark’s post finishes June/July, and will be advertised shortly.

Clearly there are different LA views on the Cymorth redistribution paper and these would be relayed to Joy at the next SPIN.

Tania will be announcing her retirement from the position of SPIN chair, agreed that Rufus should take over on temporary basis until; agreement could be reached on how post could be filled. Original intention was for exec member to take over position on a regional rotation.

ACTION: Spin chair will be included on SPIN agenda and will be discussed in more detail at the July SPIN.

CYMORTH Next meeting will be held on Thursday, 17th May, Alyson to attend.

ACTION; Need to look at dates of mini SPIN meetings to better complement feedback into SPIN exec and receive feedback from Cymorth

  1. SPIN Response SPRG Grant Conditions

Tania sent around for feedback to give to Simon. Majority of people have fedback to Tania and a copy as been sent to all SP managers some LA’s have submitted individual responses.

  1. Cymorth Response SPRG Grant Conditions

Concerns around the Cymorth SPRG re-modelling section with savings passed back to WAG. Discussions around joining training sessions between Cymorth/SPIN to look at outcomes will help

It was agreed that quite a few points were similar between responses

Item is already on SPIN agenda for discussion.

  1. Local Housing Strategy – SP contributions

SP seem to generally be asked to contribute 3-4 pages into the latest Local Housing Strategy, similarly homelessness constitutes only a couple of pages.

Issue is whilst wanting to be concise, there is a danger that the SP section becomes too simplistic and generic and this will not reflect the actual detail of needs of SP within authorities.

  1. Items for SPIN

SPRG reviews update

New SPIN chair

  1. AOB

SPriNT – Swansea are asking to for other LA’s to work together with SPriNT implementation and share the costs, if anyone is interested can they contact Peter Field on 01792 533707. Monmouthshire has employed Matt to implement SPriNT throughout all FS schemes and are requesting contact details of each individual within the LA SP team who are dealing with SPriNT for Matt to contact.

Caerphilly has agreed to pay for 3 agencies license costs.

Gareth asked if there is any link between SPriNT and Illy, Shelly confirmed she has a meeting arranged to discuss possibility of upload with Dinesh and Richard and will feed back result in due course.