Service User Member Involvement Team – SUMIT
Seeing Better Together
Minutes: Wednesday 26 November 2014
1. Welcome and apologies
Present: Kay Dear (KD Chair) Lisa Jones (LJ NFB), Stella Hodgson
(SH), Paul Smith (PS), Shamaila Kauser (SK) and Catherine
Norcliffe (CN) and Julie Scarle (JS Minutes).
Apologies: Paul Baskcomb (PB), Neana Lawson (NL NFB) and
David Butler (DB).
2. Chair for next meeting
CN JS to take minutes.
3. Minutes from October 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 new SUMIT member, Sheila Long attending her first
meeting.
One new expression of interest in SUMIT membership was
received from Matthew Galtress.
Mark Whittle and Lisa Jones will be leaving SUMIT to take up
their positions on the Trust Board following their elections at the
AGM on 24 October. SUMIT formally thanked Mark Whittle and
Lisa Jones for their valuable contributions to the committee and
wished them well as they take up their new role as Trustees.
Action: SUMIT agreed to invite Matthew to attend the January
meeting.
b) Drop in/e-mails and suggestion box
Just junk mail on SUMIT email and the suggestion box was
empty.
5. Courtesy calls
Four SUMIT members (CN, PS, MW and SH) took part in 5 separate
courtesy call sessions over a 3 week period in October, contributing
approximately 62 volunteer hours and making approximately 20 calls
per session. Due to the nature of the AGM consultation they
telephoned people living in NG17 and NG18 post codes and on My
Sight Notts members who were eligible to vote at the AGM.
Courtesy calling prior to the AGM may have helped achieve capacity
attendance, with more than 50 people attending the event.
6. Raising the profile of SUMIT
SUMIT contributed an article to the magazine, asking for
people to come forward and join SUMIT.
7. Open Day/AGM
SUMIT hosted its second engagement event following the AGM on
Friday 24 October. 3 discussion tables were hosted by CN, MW and
SH and the event was also attended by KD.
Attendance was down on that achieved in 2013, with only 12 people
attending. Only 2 attendees and one facilitator lived outside the city
of Nottingham, making it difficult for people to contribute to the
discussion on services for visually impaired people in the county.
SUMIT said it was disappointed in the mix up over transport for the
choir, which SH believed was being provided after the close of the
consultation and not after the close of the AGM. SUMIT believed
that if most of the choir members who had expressed an interest in
attending the consultation event had attended, both the attendance
and the contributions of people living outside of Nottingham would
have been significantly higher.
SUMIT agreed that hold another consultation event as part of the
AGM in 2015 and asked that transport arrangements be considered
more carefully in future.
SUMIT suggested that for this particular consultation, it would be
worth holding a focus group in Mansfield and most people thought
this was a good idea if it could be arranged before the consultation
closes. JS explained that a survey will be sent out to everyone on
the database and SUMIT asked if there would be the opportunity for
telephone surveys. JS said she would suggest it and SUMIT asked
her to pass on to staff their offer to help with any telephone surveys
through further courtesy calling.
Action: JS asked to draft a summary report of the feedback
obtained from the event once the audio tapes have been
transcribed. SUMIT also asked JS to let My Sight Notts staff know
that they would be prepared to do more courtesy calls around the
Reaching Communities consultation in the New Year, if this would
help to get more people taking part in the discussion.
8. Membership scheme
LJ attended her last SUMIT meeting to present her re-draft of the
membership document.
Action: Not everyone had read it and JS was asked to circulate it for
final comment.
9. Services
Michael Conroy attended to inform SUMIT that following feedback
obtained through the SUMIT consultation events and support centre
survey, My Sight Notts had been considering new models of service
delivery, including providing more community-based services and
providing more services outside Nottingham. As a result of this
feedback and because the current building in Radford was too large
and expensive to maintain, the charity will be placing its Ortzen
Street centre on the market in the New Year for sale or rent.
Michael said it was likely the charity would look for a more central
location, perhaps in Nottingham City Centre and planned to secure
other community venues in the county from which to deliver some
services. Michael also said that if the Reaching Communities bid
was successful, then the charity would look to deliver an increasing
number of its services out in the county, closer to where people live.
SUMIT understood the decision and said that in addition to Radford
being difficult to access (involving most people in two bus journeys)
they had also been told by service users that they were also
reluctant to travel around Radford in the evening because of the
area’s reputation.
LJ said that any city centre location would have to have a spending
pen for guide dogs and a drop-off point for people travelling in cars
or by taxi. It was also suggested that we try to use the venues Sarah
travels to for service delivery, why not run IT workshops in
conjunction with her equipment visit and have social peer support
drop-in sessions too? LJ also said that when planning new service
venues we needed to be mindful of public transport networks as
some places that looked geographically close were not connected
by frequent public transport services.
Michael also explained the method of communication and the
timeline for letting people know that we were planning to move from
Ortzen St, he also asked SUMIT if they felt SurveyMonkey was an
accessible tool and everyone agreed that it was but that we should
also offer the facility for a telephone survey, which SUMIT were
more than happy to support with courtesy calls.
SUMIT asked to be kept informed as things developed.
10. Any other business
a) Strategy
Michael Conroy thanked SUMIT for all its hard work around the
AGM and discussion forum.
b) Trust Board
Trustee to be invited to attend the January meeting.
c) Christmas lunch
LJ reminded people of the date, time and venue of the SUMIT
Christmas lunch at the Orange Tree on 10 December.
11. Next meeting
 January 28th 1-3pm
 February 25 4-6pm
 March 25 9:30-12:30