Poverty is everyone’s business

Our efforts to tackle poverty across all our services is moving forward at pace.

Council recently agreed ‘Working Towards Prosperity for All in Swansea’ A Tackling Poverty Strategy for Swansea 2017 – 2020.  The strategy has three themes:

• Empowering local people through involvement and participation
• Changing cultures to reflect that tackling poverty is everyone’s business
• Targeting resources to maximise access to opportunity and prosperity

The delivery plan has 81 objectives which touch virtually every part of our organisation so we all have a role in helping to tackle poverty. And this week I chaired the Poverty Forum network which agreed its delivery plan and then considered a presentation on the impacts of Universal Credit on Swansea and its citizens.  The simple fact is that more than 9,000 households in Swansea are worse off as a consequence of the changes.  The introduction of Universal Credit has presented some unique challenges for a number of organisations including ours.  A key issue is that all claimants require an email address which raises issues around digital inclusion – many claimants are arriving with no e-mail addresses and no means to access the internet.  I know that staff in libraries as elsewhere do fantastic work to support claimants. The presentation can be found here.

Budget update

Cabinet yesterday approved its budget which will now be discussed by Full Council on March 1. It includes:

• Extra £3.5m for education.
• Extra £2.7m for social care services
• Around £150m for more 21^stcentury schools
• More than £57m on new council housing and a council house kitchen and bathroom replacement programme.
• £1.4m extra in capital funding to help maintain roads and traffic management
• £6m for a new fleet of waste collection vehicles
• Proposals to charge school staff for parking on-site are not being mandated, although individual schools can charge for parking if they want to.

I know some staff are still “at risk” but I’m grateful to officers in HR who are continuing to redeploy staff and deal with ER/VR applications to help reduce any compulsory redundancies.

Western Bay

The Western Bay Regional Partnership Board reviewed and agreed the priorities for joint working outlined in its 2018-2023 plan. The main focus of this plan is on priorities for regional and integrated working between health and social care, including the use of the Integrated Care Fund in relation to:

• Older People
• Children and Young People with Complex Needs
• Mental Health
• Learning Disabilities (including Autism)
• Carers and Young Carers

We suggested some amendments and endorsed the plan which will now be considered by each of the statutory partners (health board and local authorities). It’ll be submitted to Welsh Government and hopefully published  on April 1.  Sara Harvey and the Western Bay team have done a great job keeping this on track and dealing with the diverse views of partners.

Staff Suggestion Scheme

CMT received a presentation from Michael Owens and Rhys Curtis on the IT system to support the staff suggestion scheme that has been developed by the innovation community.  They’ve done a great job and we’ll be piloting and testing the system over the coming weeks.  I hope staff take the opportunity to use it.

Better relations

Our Services in the Community cross-cutting project is looking for staff to help develop and design services with the communities and build on new/existing relationships. It’s a chance to gain new skills such as co-production, bring their experiences to the project and develop new relationships with citizens. Further info is here Staff Net Pages – Services in the Community Project.

Have your say

Following the decision not to proceed with rail electrification to Swansea a number of ideas have been generated, including a South West Wales metro. It’s time to have your say, whatever your views are.  The UK Government has launched a consultation on the future of the Great Western Franchise and is asking passengers, businesses and councils for their views at two consultation events on 13 February 2018.  https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/great-western-rail-franchise

Big conversation

The first primary school Big Conversation was held at St Teilo’s Cwtch with 120 attendees and 70 children as part of the consultation for the Local Wellbeing Plan. Feedback from primary schools has been fantastic with a desire for more events to help engage young people. Thank you to everyone involved in organising and taking part in the event.

More from Blaenymaes

It’s busy times again at Blaenymaes Primary School who recently achieved the Eco Green Flag award. Their Eco Ambassadors celebrated by inviting Iolo Williams, TV presenter, to the school. Iolo told the school stories about his adventures including an encounter with a grizzly bear. Iolo and the Ambassadors raised the Eco flag with the rest of the school watching. Thanks to Amy Bacon and Amy Smith (Eco School Coordinators) who led the assessment for the eco award and the visit from Iolo Williams.

Sad news

Peter Campbell, our former Assistant Director of Housing, passed away last week.  Peter worked for the Council for 35 years and was a valued and trusted colleague.  I’ve written to his family expressing our condolences and our thanks for his major contribution to improving the lives of council tenants.