Welcome to the September blog. Looks like Autumn has come straight at us after such a beautiful summer. I hope that you weren’t too affected by storm Ali and want to thank everyone for your support on Wednesday ensuring that all essential services were delivered.

In this edition of the blog I am going to tell you about:
• Scottish Living Wage [ SLW] back pay
• Fair Deal Annual General Meeting [AGM] • Review of our Social and Leisure programme &
• Changes within the operations team
SLW:
Day rate: I am pleased to let you know that we have received the uplift from Glasgow City Council to meet the SLW commitment. The staff who are on the following pay rates: £8.45, £8.46 and £8.69 will see their hourly rate increase to £8.75 per hour. The Business Support Team have calculated the hours worked by the staff within the salary scales outlined above from April 9th. Your payslip with have a new line which will detail the hours worked, the additional payment for each hour and the overall amount paid.
Night time rate: I am pleased to let you know that we have also received the uplift from Glasgow City Council to meet the SLW rate for sleepovers [ night time support] The rate will increase from the current rate of £7.83 to £8.75 and the increase will be backdated to April 9th. Again, the Business Support Team have calculated the night time hours worked by staff providing overnight support. Your payslip with have a new line which will detail the night time hours worked, the additional payment for each hour and the overall amount paid.
Thank you for your patience with this issue.

Fair Deal Annual General Meeting [AGM]:
Our 2018 AGM was held on the 7th of September and was a success with our new initiative Connecting on Board being one of the key presentations on the day. We also heard from Scott Green about our highly successful HYG initiative.
Time to celebrate: As an organisation we are entering our 30th year and one of the offers at the AGM was for people to get involved in planning how we celebrate this milestone. John Cuthbertson was in the office on Monday and has said he would like to be involved in planning of our celebrations. We would like to hear from anyone who would like to be a part of “Team FD” and get involved in planning what we are going to do to celebrate and recognise the contribution that the organisation has made.
Governance: This year we saw three Board members step down– Ross Blyth, Elspeth Mann and Maureen Dolan. They have all given a lot to the organisation and we are richer for having had their contribution. We also had three new people join the Board – Paul Allen, Sally Gallery and Lynn Sherry. The Board are:
Jan Beattie, Moira Nicholson, Kenny Stocks, Eamonn Connolly, Tracey Black, Donna Thompson, Paul Allen, Sally Gallery and Lynn Sherry.

Review of our social and leisure programme: Ryan McCrory and Suzanne Mulheron are currently reviewing our programme. The Dream Team are supporting this piece of work by conducting an evaluation by working with people who attend our programme and hearing what they think we are doing well and what could be better. If you are out and about and see the members of the Dream Team, please encourage the person you are with to have their say.

Changes with the operations team: Due to long term absence we advertised a temporary team leader post which was successfully filled by Suzanne Mulheron. Suzanne will be leading on the services delivered through CC1 with a few exceptions. Ryan will continue to take the lead with a couple of services. Ryan has moved over to GS1 and will be leading on the management and development of the services with a couple of exceptions. Anne Marie Borthwick is leading on a 24-hour service that was managed within GS1. Margaret Fenton will take forward line management responsibility for the team at Cairngorm Road and the team are leading on schedules etc. Pauline Martin remains a link with a cluster within GS1.
I would like to thank everyone for their continued support to the organisation. I realise that this can be difficult when changes are happening around. If you have any questions, please e-mail me: annmariedocherty@fair-deal.org
Ann Marie Docherty – CEO