A Community Event Where Communication Is
Key
Sheffield Homes are lucky. Despite the care
homes being spread on several sites around the city of Sheffield,
they have a dedicated group of staff. Unite are one of three unions
who support Sheffield Homes staff, and Unite are lucky – they have
3 good Unite ULRs across the company.
Joanne Smeaton and Sally Outram are 2 experienced Unite ULRs.
They have worked with their colleagues in Unite and other unions to
get learning for their workmates fully established across Sheffield
Homes. Indeed they have fairly recently managed to get a Learning
Agreement signed off by all 3 unions and by Sheffield Homes
management.
They decided back before Christmas last year,
that on LAW day, they should really celebrate their achievements
and show to colleagues and the wider community just what ULRs could
do for members and for the company.
The key to success was going to be
communication, keeping everyone involved in the loop. As usual, the
biggest and most obvious obstacles were going to be funding and a
venue. This year due to the cut-backs, imposed to fund the bank
bailouts, Sheffield Council had decided not to run a learning
initiative. At this point nor were anyone else involved in
Sheffield Homes.
Joanne and Sally had an ambitious dream. What
they wanted to run was an event in the city centre that could be
accessed by workers from all the Sheffield Homes sites and that
would be open to the public. To succeed they would need to pull
together resources from many different places making good
communications essential to tie it all together.
To find a venue, they were in contact with
Unite Regional Learning Organiser (RLO) Gill Campbell and
approached her for support. Gill used her negotiating skills to
secure a space in the Millennium Galleries in the middle of
Sheffield; a venue close to public transport and open to the
public.
Gill, Sally and Joanne worked together to
publicise the event as Sheffield Homes, and Sally went in search of
partners to involve. These included learning providers; carer
groups; dyslexia support groups; health services; healers and
others. Newer ULR Leonora Stavrianakos also offered to help.
Between them the ULRs negotiated with
Sheffield Homes management to allow staff paid time to travel and
take part in the event. Sue Ellin, a project worker from the GMB
union also gave her support.
On the day itself everyone was lucky with the
weather. In no time at all after the doors were opened members of
the public and Sheffield homes staff were thronging in to see what
it was about. RLO Gill Campbell, received welcome support her
colleague Unite RLO Michaela Hutchinson, who came to look after the
Unite stand and help on the day. ULR Leonora Stavrianakos took
photos of the activities. Gill, Joanne and Sally were kept busy
making sure that everything ran as planned. Mary Robinson, the
Principal Coordinator for Dyslexia Action (Hull) told Unite
Equalities officer, Sue Pollard, how impressed she was, and how
pleased with the numbers approaching the Dyslexia Action stand for
more information.
There was no shortage of visitors who
volunteered to take part in the activities and demonstrations. It
was not perhaps surprising that the demonstration of chocolate
truffle making was popular; but so were the singing and singing
lessons; the dancing and the nail art. The exercise session for
those working all day at a workstation was also well attended and
the sessions on healing by Sue Ellin ended up running 2 at a time.
Gill and the ULRs showed me the Equalities display that young
people from Hull had made and contributed to the event. It was
really quite moving and impressive.
It was really good to see the amount of
interest from Sheffield Homes staff and the general public. Over
400 people came to get involved, and it was particularly nice to
see the Sheffield Homes managers come along and support the LAW day
event.
Gill Campbell RLO told me “I’m so proud of
what the ULRs at Sheffield Homes have achieved here. It has taken a
lot of hard work and organisation to achieve this. On top of that
they have had to keep all the support and the participants up to
speed with a hundred and one different issues. It is a pleasure and
a privilege to support and work with people like this.”
Hopefully this successful event will raise
awareness of, not only, the value of learning, but also provide a
taster of some of the wide range of subjects that can be learned.
It will be a hard act for the ULRS to follow next year – but I have
every confidence that they can.
Ian Scott
Unite the Union – Learning Development
coordinator
