240130-Mintues-V01

EAP Meet­ing

Held vir­tu­ally on the 30 Janu­ary 2024

Present: Anita Howard Becca Mayo Bo Mansell Han­nah Grist (Chair) Heath­er Earn­shaw Joanna Rodgers Kate Christie (CNPA) Kate Dowding Kath­er­ine Will­ing (CNPA) Keith Turn­er Kev­in Hutchens Lina Payne Linda Bam­ford Micah Daigeaun Shreo­shi Das Stu­art Hall Vanessa Altweck

Apo­lo­gies: Mari­ana Yarnold Mar­isa Ginger Lili­ana Cor­ri­eri Fiona Mclean

1. Item one: Wel­come • Han­nah wel­comed the group to the meet­ing. • It was announced that Han­nah will be the chair of the pan­el going for­ward with Fiona still attend­ing as board representation.

2. Item two: Review of Minutes of Novem­ber 2023 • The minutes were accep­ted with no changes requested.

3. Item three: CNPA Draft Guid­ance for Staff Exper­i­en­cing Preg­nancy Loss — Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development

• Kate gave an over­view of the guid­ance, explain­ing that it was updated fol­low­ing con­sulta­tion with the intern­al Equal­ity, Diversity and Inclu­sion Advocacy Group. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted the fol­low­ing changes and addi­tions: • It was sug­ges­ted that the guid­ance should include sup­port for sib­lings and chosen fam­ily. • It was sug­ges­ted that the list of defin­i­tions on page one, are amended to cov­er dif­fer­ent types of cir­cum­stances such as non-con­sen­su­al preg­nan­cies or sur­rog­acy. When refer­ring to sur­rog­acy it was sug­ges­ted both the sur­rog­ate, and the inten­ded par­ent should be included. • Sev­er­al pan­el mem­bers sug­ges­ted that the con­tent of the doc­u­ment although wel­comed could be sens­it­ive or trig­ger­ing. There were mul­tiple sug­ges­tions on how to improve this such as, remov­ing the defin­i­tions from the first page, includ­ing a con­tents page or includ­ing a con­tent warn­ing. • The reflec­ted that there was not much men­tion of the men­tal health sup­port that would be avail­able. Kate agreed that there needed to be more men­tion of CNPA Men­tal Health First Aid­ers, Occu­pa­tion­al Health Pro­vider, free coun­selling and employ­ee assist­ance pro­gram with­in the doc­u­ment. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted that under the employ­ee respons­ib­il­ity sec­tion on the final para­graph it would be appro­pri­ate to change the word­ing to ​“all employ­ees are expec­ted to con­trib­ute to an empath­et­ic and sup­port­ive envir­on­ment”. This change removes the expect­a­tion that employ­ees will provide sym­pathy as oth­ers may have exper­i­enced preg­nancy loss them­selves and do not feel com­fort­able to talk on the sub­ject. • The pan­el recog­nised that the indi­vidu­al return­ing to work may not want to dis­cuss or dis­close their loss on return to work. The pan­el sug­ges­ted that the doc­u­ment reflects that it is the individual’s choice as to how they would like to man­age their return to work. • The pan­el wel­comed the policy and felt it went fur­ther than oth­er organ­isa­tions where it was an addi­tion to the bereave­ment policy. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted that patern­ity leave is expan­ded on so that it is inclus­ive of same-sex couples. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted that the policy should be amended to make clear that the indi­vidu­al who exper­i­enced the still birth does not need to be work­ing for the park for the part­ner to receive the sup­port out­lined in the doc­u­ment. • The pan­el also sug­ges­ted that it may be help­ful to set out what CNPA provides that is addi­tion­al to the legis­la­tion and what the state provides.

1. Item four: Feed­back from Scot­tish Coun­cil for Vol­un­tary Organ­isa­tions (SCVO) Gathering

• Kev­in gave feed­back to the pan­el on the SCVO gath­er­ing includ­ing the ses­sions he atten­ded. Kev­in agreed to send his sum­mary doc­u­ment to the equal­it­ies inbox so that the oppor­tun­it­ies could be fol­lowed up on.

1. Item five: Face to Face Event Plan­ning • Kate gave an over­view of timetable of the event and dis­cussed accom­mod­a­tion and travel.
2. AOBS • No AOBs were raised. End of meet­ing Next meet­ing 27 Feb­ru­ary 2024