EAP Meet­ing

Held vir­tu­ally on Tues­day 30^th April 2024 – 5.30pm – 6.30pm

Present: Bo Mansell Fiona McLean Han­nah Grist (Chair) Heath­er Earn­shaw Kate Christie (CNPA) Kate Dowding Kath­er­ine Will­ing (CNPA) Kev­in Hutchens Lili­ana Cor­ri­eri Lina Payne Linda Bam­ford Micah Daigeaun Stu­art Hall Vanessa Altweck

Apo­lo­gies: Anita Howard Keith Turn­er Shreo­shi Das

1. Item one: Welcome

   • Han­nah wel­comed the group to the meeting.
   • Han­nah out­lined the plan for the meeting.

2. Item two: Review of Minutes of Feb­ru­ary 2024

   • The minutes from Feb­ru­ary were agreed.
   • It was agreed to keep the action point regard­ing the Scot­tish Youth Hostel Asso­ci­ation as an out­stand­ing action on the minutes.

3. Item three: EAP Mem­bers Sur­vey Results

   • Han­nah out­lined that as a res­ult of the sur­vey the fol­low­ing actions were proposed:
   • There will be a sum­mary of the papers sent out.
   • There will be themes set for discussion.
   • Presenters will be asked to keep the intro­duc­tion to 15 minutes.
   • Dur­ing the monthly meet­ings there will be more use of break­out rooms or oth­er meth­ods of communication.
   • Meet­ings will be 90 minutes monthly.
   • Sub-groups will be used where more detailed reviews are needed.
   • Mean­ing­ful feed­back will be giv­en on what presenters have done with the advice giv­en by the panel.
   • The pan­el was asked for their feed­back on the pro­posed changes.
   • The pan­el dis­cussed the pos­sib­il­ity of meet­ings being 90 minutes. Some pan­el mem­bers felt that the meet­ing should be 60 minutes with the option to run to 90 minutes if needed. How­ever, some pan­el mem­bers felt this would mean the tim­ing would always run over and there­fore sug­ges­ted work­ing on being more time effi­cient. It was agreed to try con­tinu­ing with the meet­ings being 60 minutes and imple­ment­ing being more effi­cient with time. It was agreed to review this in the future.
   • The pan­el agreed that set­ting themes for dis­cus­sion could be really helpful.
   • The pan­el expressed how import­ant it is for presenters to think about what they send in advance of the meet­ing so that their intro­duc­tion takes up a min­im­al amount of the meet­ing to allow for dis­cus­sion. It was agreed that the struc­ture for the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing was not optim­al and that if meet­ing papers were not able to be cir­cu­lated a week in advance of the meet­ing it will cancelled.
   • The pan­el agreed that there should be sub-groups on occa­sion. The pan­el sug­ges­ted that there should be a one-page terms of ref­er­ence for the sub-group and there should be a strict time­frame for any sub-group. Some pan­els mem­bers expressed con­cern that a strength of the pan­el is vari­ety, and this could be lost with sub-groups, but sug­ges­ted that sub-groups may be use­ful for large pro­jects if prop­erly sup­por­ted and recorded.
   • Fol­low­ing the dis­cus­sion on the sur­vey res­ults it was agreed that there should be a work­ing togeth­er agree­ment for the pan­el which will be use­ful to refer back to as the pan­el grows. The pan­el split into two break­out rooms and then shared their key dis­cus­sion groups with the rest of the panel.
   • The key points shared from both groups were as follows:
     1. As a pan­el there is a need to be aware of wheth­er what is advised is feas­ible and with­in the gift of that staff mem­ber, is it a fair ask and if a fol­low up is reques­ted being mind­ful of the staff mem­bers time.
     2. The dis­cus­sion recog­nised that the meet­ings are not con­fid­en­tial due to the minutes being pub­lished but pan­el mem­bers should be aware that many people will have lived exper­i­ences and that these lived exper­i­ences should not be reflec­ted out­side of the meeting.
     3. Pan­el mem­bers should prac­tice act­ive listen­ing and dif­fer­ent ways of com­mu­nic­at­ing, such as chat func­tions and break­out rooms, should be provided.
     4. The Nolan prin­ciples (prin­ciples of pub­lic life) were dis­cussed and the pan­el felt the head­ings of grace and respect were import­ant, it was felt beha­viour should be replaced by etiquette.
     5. When par­ti­cip­at­ing in dis­cus­sions every­one should be encour­aged to use a step for­ward, step back approach.
     6. It was felt that it should be recog­nised that con­flict may occur and there should be a clear path for resolv­ing that.
     7. The dis­cus­sion recog­nised that reas­on­able adjust­ments should be made to allow every­one to access the meet­ings and con­trib­ute fully. It was sug­ges­ted that reas­on­able adjust­ment could include child­care or caring respons­ib­il­it­ies. It was also sug­ges­ted that a softer word could be used such as work­place adjust­ments, inclus­ive prac­tices or sup­port­ing people to engage.
     8. It was sug­ges­ted that pan­el mem­bers should prac­tice act­ive ally­ship, how­ever, recog­nising that not every­one will exper­i­ence everything in the same way which needs to be con­sidered by every­one when dis­cuss­ing nuanced issues.
     9. It was reflec­ted by the pan­el that every­one should be proud of the work of the pan­el and that work and suc­cess stor­ies should be publicised.
     10. It was sug­ges­ted that a ses­sion on poverty and those groups that alle­vi­ate poverty should be arranged.
   • The pan­el agreed that they were happy to respond through cor­res­pond­ence regard­ing the guidelines.

4. AOBS

   • It was announced that Bo will be leav­ing the panel.

End of meeting

Next meet­ing 28 May 2024