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Service User Member Involvement Team (SUMIT)
Working to enhance your My Sight Nottinghamshire
Minutes: 31 July, 2013
*Please note Action points and points agreed are listed in a
separate document.
Present: Stella Hodgson (SH Chair) Julie Scarle (JS minutes),
Shamaila Kauser (SK), Jack Barrett (JB), Paul Baskcomb (PB),
David Butler (DB)
Apologies: Bilal Hussein (BH)
A) The meeting was quorate.
1. Welcome and apologies:
Apologies were received from BH prior to the meeting and
from KD the following day.
2. Chair for meetings
Chair for today’s meeting was SH
Next meeting due to be held on 28 August will be chaired by
DB.
3. Minutes
Minutes from the meeting held on 25 June were approved,
Action: JS to publish June minutes to the My Sight Notts
website.
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4. Terms of reference
SUMIT thanked PB for updating the Terms of reference.
JS informed SUMIT that the issues discussed at the last
meeting regarding a possible SUMIT AGM and election of
new committee members had been discussed by My Sight
Nottinghamshire’s Board of Trustees at its last meeting in
July.
Feedback from the Board on the proposed AGM was that a
separate SUMIT AGM was not needed because SUMIT was
part of My Sight Nottinghamshire and not a separate
organisation. Any SUMIT elections or other business should
be brought to the My Sight Notts AGM, at which SUMIT would
continue to be represented.
With regard to holding elections for SUMIT committee
members, the Trust Board will defer to SUMIT, however they
felt that if elections were to be held they should be
representative and My Sight Nottinghamshire members
should be given sufficient time and information to make an
informed choice of candidates following a full pre-election
information campaign. They also advised that whilst SUMIT
was struggling to recruit a full committee of 11 members, any
elections might be an unnecessary distraction at this stage
SUMIT accepted the advice of the Trust Board.
Action: PB to update the Terms of Reference points:
T12, T13 and T14 following comments from My Sight
Nottinghamshire’s Trust Board and re-circulate to SUMIT
for final approval.
5. Achievements/Annual Review 2012/2013:
SH submitted a second draft of Annual Review for 2012/2013.
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SUMIT congratulated SH on an excellent Annual Review and
thanked JS for her support.
PB and JB had a small number of minor text edits for typing
errors etc, which they would send through to JS who would
circulate the final version to SUMIT.
Action: SUMIT to forward any edits to JS for 12 August. JS
to re-circulate edited final version to SUMIT by 16 August.
6. Matters arising
a) Priorities log
SUMIT was generally happy with the priorities log as it stands
but the following minor changes were suggested:
1) Add the date to the top of the log for easy revision history
and identification
2) Create a word version of the document for access by those
using screen readers
3) Add an additional column at the end for results.
Action: JS to make the above changes and re-circulate to SUMIT
by 16 August.
It was agreed: that the priorities log would be reviewed every six
months to check achievements against objectives. Next review
would be October 2013.
b) Committee members
Following the discussion in June about a request JS has received
from a former member of SUMIT to rejoin the committee, JS read
out information provided by Michael Conroy and requested by
SUMIT providing more detail about the reasons the former SUMIT
member was asked to leave SUMIT in the past.
SUMIT discussed the re-application for SUMIT membership but
there was no clear decision. Some SUMIT members raised
concerns about re-admitting someone whose former actions had
brought SUMIT into disrepute in the past leading to it being
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temporarily ‘wound up’. Others felt that as the events had occurred
in 2009 and there had been no further incidence of questionable
behaviour from the individual concerned, that he should be given a
second chance especially as he accesses a lot of My Sight
Nottinghamshire’s services and has good contacts amongst My
Sight Notts’ members and service users.
As no decision was forthcoming, it was agreed that he should be
invited to join the SUMIT sub-committee being set up to organise
the service user event in September. This would give SUMIT an
opportunity to get to know him, see if they could work with him and
obtain assurances from him that the behaviour that had brought
SUMIT into disrepute in 2009 would not be repeated.
SUMIT would then discuss his re-application at the October
meeting when a final decision would be made.
Action: JS to speak to the former member of SUMIT who has
asked to re-join and invite him to take part in the planning of
the event in September. She would then feedback his
response to the rest of SUMIT.
SUMIT also discussed the practice of asking new applicants to
attend three meetings before becoming full members of SUMIT, It
was agreed to retain the practice and also to speak to them before
they formally joined SUMIT to explain what was expected of them
and to find out what their special interests might be.
It was agreed: to retain the practice of asking new SUMIT
committee members to attend three meetings before being
fully accepted and to invite them to meet exiting SUMIT
members for a discussion.
Following a discussion at May and June meetings about asking
local groups that represented people with sight loss to nominate a
representative to attend SUMIT, it was agreed that JS should
initially approach the Nottingham Federation of Blind People.
SUMIT would then review the success of the scheme before
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deciding whether or not to approach additional groups. PB
reminded SUMIT that it currently has seven committee members
and, according to the Terms of Reference, needs 11. It was agreed
that all members of SUMIT would receive full voting rights,
including those representing other sight loss organisations such as
the Notts Federation of Blind People.
Action: JS to approach the Nottingham Federation of Blind
People and report back at the August meeting.
c) Meeting date & time
The meeting on 28 August would take place between 4-6pm and
although the 25 September meeting would normally take place
in the morning, it would, for this one occasion, take place from 14pm instead because of the SUMIT service user event
scheduled to take place on the same day in the morning. Normal
rotation of time of day would then resume.
Action: JS to book meeting room all day on 25 September.
d) My Sight Notts members’ drop-in, emails telephone and
suggestion box.
SUMIT suggestion box and emails now being monitored.
There were currently no issue that required follow-up. JS
confirmed that the two auto-forwards on SUMIT emails had
now been removed.
7. Courtesy calls
SUMIT agreed that in light of the proposed engagement event
on 25 September, the next theme for courtesy calls should be
about attendance at the event.
Action: JS asked to circulate a list of proposed dates for
courtesy call sessions in August and September for SUMIT to
check their availability. JS then to ensure each date had two
SUMIT courtesy callers available and re-circulate the list for
confirmation.
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Action: JS to re-draft courtesy call crib sheet in accordance
with the discussion at today’s meeting and circulate to SUMIT
for comment.
8. Raising the profile of SUMIT
a) Notice board
A demo of the Pen Friend was provided by Holly Furlong-Waite
and SUMIT agreed to ask My Sight Notts to provide a Pen Friend
for the notice board and promote its availability to My Sight
Nottinghamshire’s service users.
Action: JS to request Pen Friend for SUMIT notice board.
It was also suggested by DB that SUMIT could make use of Audio
Boo to enable access to SUMIT information by mobile phones.
Action: JS/DB to speak to Alan Hart to explore Audio Boo
technology further to see if it would be useful to allow access
to SUMIT minutes and other information.
b) Poster, new strapline and web page content discussion deferred
to a later meeting.
Action: DB to add as agenda item to be discussed at next
meeting.
9. Membership project
Membership to form the basis for a discussion at the engagement
event on 25 September. A working group to help plan the agenda,
invitation mailshot and publicity for the event on 25 September
would be set up as a sub-group of SUMIT. Date of meeting 21
August at 9:30. Attending PB, JB, SK, SH and the proposed new
member of SUMIT.
Action: JS to book meeting room for 21 August and 25
September and to check with Michael Conroy that budget
would be available for refreshments.
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10. Transport consultation
JS confirmed that My Sight Nottinghamshire was still in the
process of setting up a transport consultation group and the Board
of Trustees has been asked to nominate representatives to attend
the group. Faye Dale and Emma Cruickshank were leading the
project and would contact BH and PB in due course.
11. SILT questionnaire
JS informed SUMIT that there had been over 70 responses to the
SILT questionnaire and the Trustees and staff had asked her to
thank and congratulate SUMIT on its input to the survey, which had
elicited one of the charity’s best responses to date.
Action: JS to request Emma Cruickshank to provide updates
on any proposed changes to SILT services that resulted from
the questionnaire.
12. AOB
Meeting guest
SK suggested that Leisure Services be ask to send a
representative to a future meeting to outline the charity’s recent
work with children and young people.
It was agreed: that meeting guests would be kept under
review but that no guests should be invited during August and
September to allow SUMIT time to plan the engagement
meeting on 25 September.
13.Date and time of next meetings
28 August 4-6:30pm
25 September 1:30-4:30pm
Venue: Ortzen Street
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