Meetings & Snow

Hi everyone - this is my blog for the last two weeks as I missed out
last week as I was facilitating a continuous professional development 
day for the six MAYouth and Community students for whom I am responsible
under the terms of the agreement we have in the Brighton Consortium. It
was a very good session, and indeed inspiring to hear about the issues
that they face as voluntary sector youth workers.  They are a very
committed bunch and great to work with.

I had a meeting last week with a colleague who is setting up a workshop
with Michael Gove as the principal speaker, and to which Surrey Youth
Focus and Surrey Youth Consortium are hoping to contribute. More later.
This week has been dominated by snow, England not being a World Cup
football venue, but the English cricketers doing well against Australia!

As we have not had any central heating at the Astolat offices for nearly
two weeks (burst water pipe) I was glad of the snow on Wednesday to be
working at home, as now. Home-working is quite a skill,  involving
clever IT and lots of personal discipline..I am not sure I'm great at
either.

Several meetings have been cancelled...understandably when Surrey Police
warn that one should only travel in an emergency. However I have been
working on a revised paper on the direction of travel for Surrey Youth
Focus for the next year or more (into 2012), and this concentrates on
Surrey Youth Focus being an enabler/ facilitator of partnerships.

As an example, I am in discussion with Surrey CC about taking a social
impact bond project forward on a pilot basis, and I have a worked
example from a member organisation to put forward. This could be a very
imporant development as an innovative means of funding.
Surrey CC's youth development service reorganisation plan (Fit for the
Future) has cleared their Select Committee and now goes forward to their
Cabinet on 21 December, and the level of funding for the volunatry
sector in 2011/12 will become clearer soon. There are Budget
consultation sessions on 15 December, and 26 January coming up.
Challenging times.

We're off to London on Saturday (trendy Stoke Newington) for youngest
son's 30 birthday lunch at a Turkish restaurant with the whole of our
family, and his mates - should be fun...let's hope we can get back home
afterwards!

Stay safe, keep warm!
Mike