Minutes of the Family Forum

 

 The Old Police Station, Mersey Road, Runcorn

 

 Wednesday 9th June 2004

at 12.00 noon – 2.00 pm

 

 

Debbie Dalby welcomed everybody to the meeting and asked if they would introduce themselves to the rest of the Panel.

 

Minutes of the Last Meeting

The minutes were agreed as a true record and no matters were arising

 

Future Structure

A discussion took place regarding future structure of the group and the following considerations were raised:

 

w         speaker based meetings or debates

w         bigger issues that members may wish to address

w         how information should be passed on

w         what could be done to assist members in their jobs

w         more formal structure

w         frequency of meetings (bi-monthly was agreed so that Wendy Price could bring issues from the Children and Young Peoples Strategic Partnership to everybody’s attention.

 

Youth drinking was brought up at the last meeting.  What type of guest speaker would everybody like to see?  Do they want someone who talks about youth nuisance or what causes youths to drink?  It was thought that information was needed from both aspects.

 

We need to know what’s happening and also what we want to happen.

 

Debbie asked if it would be helpful to get somebody from the Children and Young Peoples Strategic Partnership (CYPSP) to come along and explain what they do and the problems they face.  This was agreed as a good idea.

 

It was thought that the first ¾ hr could be about exchanging information and then in the second half have discussions or speakers on particular subjects that are of interest to people.

 

Kath explained to everybody that they can get information on all the forums and their members on the Halton Together website.  In between meetings if people have any information that they would like other people to know about then they could let us know and we will post it on the website for everybody to see.

 

Debbie said that we would type these structures up into a mini constitution.

 

It was thought that if we were going to have a speaker at the meetings it would be best to let the speaker know that they need to give a brief talk with plenty of opportunity for discussion, rather than have somebody simply speak and then leave.

 

Five a day training – Heather Apsley

 

Heather explained a little about the work she does with the five a day training and said that it was a feature of the Government Prevention Strategy.

 

Rather than talk about what the five a day programme was, Heather gave out a couple of health related quizzes to get an idea of what people already knew.

 

Family Forum

 

 

What is it for?

 

·                    Information sharing for both funding and joint working.

·                    To find support.

·                    Decision making.

·                    Structure and ways of affecting good practice.

·                    Guest speakers.

·                    Information structures and functions of CPPSP.

·                    Issues based eg. children, youth drinking (effects and causes).

·                    Consultation strategies.

·                    Outcomes:

            Inform each other.

            Influence.

·                    Inputs – information from SSP.

·                    Consultation – vehicle.

·                    Meetings:

            Bi-monthly.

            Agenda to include key issues from/for SSP.

·                    Part 1 - News/information sharing.

·                    Part 2 – Strategic/issue based.