A Whirlwind (April 25)
It has been an incredibly busy few months since we launched the Strategy in February, and a few months on the pace hasn’t slowed down with a few awards shortlists we look forward to sharing with you soon… The enthusiasm across the whole team of changemakers in the organisation is still amazing, and the next trick we need to perfect is how we keep the momentum going??
April is always a busy month with the dreaded year-end and planning our budgets for the next year to ensure we prioritise the delivery of high-quality family support services this year. And alongside all of this decision making, we have continued to make gains in our strategy development, such as:
- Hosted our first Volunteer Conference, which was an incredible morning and lunch at the Adam Smith, where we heard about the new volunteer strategy development, talked about the Fife Gingerbread values, heard from great speakers, and watched some incredible videos which captured the impact of volunteers beautifully.
- Laura (our CEO) spoke at a few events including an Attendance Conference hosted in COSLA, and a lovely morning with the Chief Officers of citizens advice bureaus from all over Scotland. At a local level we have continued to engage with MPs and MSPs to share our Strategy and why the five Manifesto Commitments are so important.
- Laura also joined a local cost of the school day working group with colleagues from Fife Council and Education Scotland, beginning to explore the challenge. We started with focusing on understanding our data and the processes surrounding support such as free school meals and school clothing grants. At Fife Gingerbread we hope to include some questions about the cost of the school day in our next Annual Survey over the Summer, and we’re exploring the idea of asking a small group of parents to keep diaries for the 25/26 academic year to understand the essential, additional and hidden cost of our children’s Education to identify opportunities to poverty proof our Schools.
- We had a new member of the team join us (Dawn) who will be the Project Manager for the Lone Parent Positive Workplaces – Scotland. She is currently getting settled in, building relationships, learning, enduring lots of meetings and online training requirements… Watch this space for updates on the project over the coming months!
- In Housing we have had an exciting opportunity to move a member of staff to lead a test & demonstration focused on testing the concept of a ‘team around the home’ for families in temporary accommodation and some collective action supported by our friends at Shelter Scotland. Katy was successful in securing this post, and will lead this exciting 12-month project.
On reflection this month, the latest child poverty data in Scotland could be seen as a success, however, as a nation there are still 22% of children and young people surviving poverty. Child Poverty is the motivator behind all of our work, as it is the common thread connecting families we meet and the factor in the lives of families which holds them stuck in place. So, we must be ready to amplify the voice of families and nimble to respond to new opportunities such as the Housing test & demonstration. There is some risk to moving quickly, but if we continue to work collaboratively, reflect on our learning, and underpin our work with methodology such as Quality Improvement, then we can better understand our successes and learn from our failures.
