Service User Member Involvement Team – SUMIT
Seeing Better Together
Minutes: Wednesday 28 January 2015
1. Welcome and apologies
Present: Catherine Norcliffe (CN Chair), Stella Hodgson (SH),
Shamaila Kauser (SK), Sheila Long (SL), Matthew Galtress (MG)
and Julie Scarle (JS staff rep & Minutes).
Apologies: Paul Baskcomb (PB), Neana Lawson (NL NFB), Paul
Smith (PS) and Kay Dear (KD)
2. Chair for next meeting
SH, JS to take minutes.
3. Minutes from November meeting
The minutes were approved.
Action: JS to publish Minutes on website and place on notice
board.
4. Matters arising:
a) SUMIT membership:
Welcome to Matthew Galtress attending his first meeting.
It has been suggested that Jay Roe may be interested in joining
SUMIT. If Jay were interested in joining, her membership would
bring the committee up to 11 members, which was its full
capacity.
The committee then discussed what should be done about SUMIT
members who failed to attend on a regular basis.
It was agreed: until such time as the committee reached 11
members and people who failed to attend regularly were blocking
others from joining, to take no action, but to keep the situation
under review.
Action: SUMIT asked JS to speak to Jay Roe and see if she
would be interested in joining the committee on a trial basis.
b) Drop in/e-mails and suggestion box
Spam mail on SUMIT email and the suggestion box was empty.
5. Courtesy calls
JS discussed the current My Sight Notts survey, which was
sent to everyone on the database in early January. She
explained that the charity planned to actively call service users
(especially those in the north of the county) to offer support to
complete the survey over the phone.
JS explained that the survey contained 21 questions and was
also available online through SurveyMonkey. She asked if
SUMIT members would like to get involved in the telephone
surveys. Some committee members felt such a long survey
would be quite challenging for them to complete with service
users over the telephone. CN said she would like to get
involved and asked JS to approach PS to see if he would be
interested in partnering her. SK said she would check out the
accessibility of the survey online and get back to her.
It was agreed not to set up any new courtesy call sessions
during the period of the telephone survey as this would be
counter-productive and possibly confusing for service users.
SUMIT asked to be kept updated with the survey findings and
would keep courtesy calls under review and discuss once the
My Sight Notts survey was complete.
6. Raising the profile of SUMIT
SUMIT contributed an article to the magazine, asking for
people to come forward and join SUMIT. JS observed that
SUMIT was mentioned in three separate articles in the latest
magazine.
JS also passed on an observation from Lisa Jones (former
SUMIT member, now a Trustee) about the SUMIT leaflet, which
was a little out of date. SUMIT was also represented at the
recent Christmas Fair and committee members expressed
interest in attending future My Sight Notts events.
Action: JS to circulate the SUMIT leaflet for discussion at the
next meeting with a view to an update and re-draft.
Action: JS to speak to Sarah and obtain a list of any
equipment fairs or other events taking place, which SUMIT
might like to attend.
7. Open Day/AGM
The AGM event summary report has been drafted by JS and would
be sent to the Trust Board and to the management team.
It was agreed to review the date and subject of the next event at the
July meeting and to begin planning for another service user
discussion forum as part of the next AGM nearer to the time,
possibly drawing up plans in August.
8. Membership scheme
JS apologised for not sending Lisa Jones’s re-draft of the
membership document for final comments. She explained that this
was due to her sickness absence during the whole of December.
Action: JS to circulate revised membership document with the
minutes for final approval at the Feb meeting.
9. Services
Martha Highton (MH), My Sight Nottinghamshire’s My Guide and
Volunteer Coordinator attended the SUMIT meeting to talk about a
potential new service she is hoping to develop. MH explained that
the potential new service is a volunteer led peer-to-peer support
group. She explained that she had the support of a visually impaired
trainee counsellor, who had agreed to facilitate the proposed new
group, which would be hosted at Ortzen Street and supported by
Martha.
Martha explained that she and her volunteer were also taking their
proposal (in the form of a project plan) to the Services Subcommittee of the Trust Board for consideration and discussion. She
suggested that a copy of the project plan could be circulated to
SUMIT members for their comments.
MG asked if the proposed group was replicating the work of the
Thursday Social Group and MH said that the proposed group would
be quite different. She said that the group would be facilitated by a
trained counsellor and the primary objective was for people to be
able to talk about sight loss, how they were coping with it and share
ideas and experiences in a mutually supportive environment. This
was a very different offering to the Thursday Social Group, which
was primarily an activity based social gathering, rather than a sight
loss peer support group.
MH explained that subject to approval from the Services Subcommittee, she hoped to launch the new group in April. She
explained that it should be relatively easy to get off the ground
because she had a skilled volunteer facilitator, she was prepared to
volunteer her time for free if required and the meeting venue and
speakers would not involve a direct cost to the charity.
SUMIT were supportive of the proposal and said that their courtesy
calls would support the need for some kind of peer support group.
CN asked where the referrals would come from and MH explained
that initially the group would be made up of people known to My
Sight Notts staff who had expressed the need for peer support, If the
group was successful, MH hoped to recruit more counselling
volunteers – possibly through Action for Blind People’s network of
counsellors – and the promote the group to the wider VI community.
SH asked if the group would only be open to people newly
diagnosed with sight loss and MH said that she hoped the members
of the group would represent a broad range of people at different
stages in their sight loss journey. If everyone was newly diagnosed,
it would be less likely group members could pass on their positive
experiences of overcoming challenges, so to work effectively the
group needed to be representative. SL asked if the group would be
open to carers and family members and MH said that it would. DB
said this might prevent some people from talking about how they
were feeling. MH said the proposed new group was a pilot project
and these sorts of issues would be ironed out as the group
progressed.
MH explained that a volunteer driver had been recruited to support
people to get to the group and in her view the resources were in
place to launch the new service is a trial pilot project, subject to
approval from the Services Sub-committee and the feedback of
SUMIT.
My Sight Notts Trustee, Sue Bish (SB) joined the meeting and SH
explained that SUMIT had been hearing about a proposed new
peer-to-peer support group. She explained that as everything
seemed to be in place and SUMIT’s courtesy call feedback
suggested there was a need for peer support that SUMIT were in
agreement with MH’s proposal.
SH also asked SB if there were any developments on a proposed
new shopping service, which she had brought to SUMIT some
months ago and which was being considered for viability.JS
confirmed that Emma Cruickshank was looking into the viability of a
proposed new shopping service and SB said she believed there was
a need for support with shopping and that EC might take a look at a
successful shopping service operated by the Warwickshire
Association for the Blind.
SUMIT asked to be kept up to date with decisions about both a peerto-peer support service and a shopping service.
Action: JS to circulate MH’s project plan.
10. Any other business
a) SB introduced herself and asked SUMIT for their views on the
charity’s plans to move from Ortzen Street. SUMIT explained that
Michael Conroy had attended the SUMIT meeting in November to
discuss the proposals with SUMIT. SUMIT agreed that it was in
agreement with the need to move from Ortzen Street but the
success of the move would be dependent on where the charity
would relocate to. DB suggested that My Sight Notts should
consider the old vacant fire station on North Church St as it
offered a city centre location and car parking. JS said that the
choice of a new base for the charity would need to provide costeffective as well as accessible accommodation and be available
to rent at such a time as a tenant or buyer was found for Ortzen
Street. SUMIT members thought it was very important that they
should be consulted on the proposed new site before a final
decision to move was made.
b) Guest for next meeting. SUMIT asked if someone from My Sight
Notts could attend and provide an update on the progress of the
survey.
c) JS said that My Sight Notts was setting up some ‘handling difficult
calls’ training in March. The training would include staff and be
provided by a trained counsellor. She asked if SUMIT would be
interested in attending and CN, DB, SL, MG said that they would
like more details and would probably be interested if the date and
time were convenient. JS also said that some training courses
were available through Ingues to people volunteering for eight
hours or more a week, which was quite a lot of hours and more
than most SUMIT members were currently required to do. CN
said she would be interested and could potentially increase her
volunteer hours for My Sight Notts. JS was asked to circulate the
list of courses.
Action: JS to circulate a list of training courses and dates for
SUMIT members to consider.
11. Next meeting
 February 25 9:30am-12:30pm
 March 25 1-3pm
 April 29 4-6pm