Transcript

Good afternoon, everyone. Item one, apologies for absence. Thank you. Item two, urgent business, which is item seven. Item three, declarations of interest. Item four, our members happy to approve the minutes of the general purposes committee meeting held on the 26th of June, 2024. Thank you. [ Pause ] OK. [ Pause ] We'll now move on to item seven. Appointment of member level bodies for 2024 to 2025. Our members happy to agree the appointment to the scrutiny panel is detailed in paragraph 5.3. Agreed. Thank you very much. And then we'll now return to the agenda and start with item five, the proposal for the Royal Royal Greenwich Council becoming a fostering friendly employer and offering an incentive to council staff for foster care recruitment. We'll be speaking on this item. Yeah, I can speak to the item. Essentially, the drive is to increase the number of foster carers that are Greenwich foster carers not using independent fostering agencies which cost approximately 20,000 more per child a year. We want to ensure that we value our foster carers and that we increase the number of staff who could become foster carers. As part of that, this initiative by the fostering network about being a foster friendly employee, you then get registered with the fostering network that you have that status. Essentially, it means it's an additional five days leave for each person who becomes a foster carer and a 250 incentive if you recommend somebody else to be a foster carer and that they are successful in that application. So that's the proposal, the decision. Thank you very much, Florence. Do members have questions? Councillor Lecow. Yeah. Thank you very much for this report. I really welcome it because I think children always thrive better within caring home and keeping them local is really important. I think we've seen where they thrive better when they are within the communities that they've grown up in. And I think also it just speaks to extending the same values that we have for the community to our own staff. And I just think that this is really important. So I fully welcome this report. Thank you. Councillor Fletcher. Yeah, thanks, chair. How are we going to launch it? And will we be launching it with foster carers that can speak to people that might be thinking or? That's a really good point. We'll certainly do a communication strategy around it. It will go into talk Greenwich. But I think your point about utilizing foster carers. So we have a big campaign. Could you foster? I'm sure you've seen the team out and about in Greenwich in the community in the weekends. And we will launch something similar within the local authority within ourselves. And promote it and talk Greenwich. But you utilize foster carers. And maybe a foster carer is already employed with Greenwich. I'm sure we've got somebody that we can do. But we will have a communications plan around that. Thank you very much. Councillor Hartley. Thank you, chair. Yes, also very happy to support. It's not an interest I needed to declare. But as it happens, I work for an employer who is already, which is already a foster-friendly employer. And we have found that it is particularly valuable in widening the pool of applicants for roles. And I know it's mentioned in the report about attracting talent. But that could enable us when we're trying to attract talent to the council to actually sort of communicate with and to seek applications from the borough's fostering parent community that already exists as well. So there's a kind of -- I'm happy to support it. And particularly because of that recruitment benefit. Which, as I say, the organization I work for has experienced firsthand. Thank you very much. So are members happy to agree to decisions in section 1.1 of the report, please raise your hand. Chair, just before you make the decision, just like a slight amendment to the legal comments. There's a reference to the director in the penultimate paragraph of the legal comments. That should, in fact, read the council. Could you just for the purpose of me to -- could you just repeat that? So in the legal comments, over the page, second to the last paragraph, it says the director can therefore make the decision. That should read the council can therefore make the decision. Okay. With that -- with that amendment, I believe, with the legal advice, we can accept it. I'd be happy to vote on the report with that amendment being made at here, this meeting now. So are members happy to agree decision to 1.1 of the report in addition to the amendment of the legal comments, which says the council can therefore make the decision required. Please raise your hands. Thank you very much. We'll now move on to item six, to agree to violence and aggression health and safety policy standards. And this will be presented by David White. Thank you, David. Thank you. So the policy standard provides an overarching policy framework for the council to help meet its legislative responsibilities for managing the risk of physical harm, including the misses to members of staff from members of the public. It does this by promoting managerial awareness of the key responsibilities that all managers within the council have to protect our staff, as well as supporting the development of role-based arrangements to keep staff members safe from physical assault, and has been developed in concert with the broader work that the council's undertaking around zero tolerance to violence and abuse towards staff. Thank you very much, David. If you could just wait there. Do colleagues have any questions? Councillor Lecow. Thank you, Chair. I again really welcome this. And as someone who saw one of our members of staff abuse in an unfortunate incident and frontline member of staff, I think it's really important that we're seen as a council to be taking this very seriously, and, you know, it does concern me. A lot of our members are out there working on their own in quite vulnerable situations, so I do appreciate this. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? No? Okay. Are members happy to agree the decision in 1.1 of the report? Just like to raise your hands. Thank you very much. All right. That brings us to the end. Obviously, we brought Item 7 forward and agreed it. And I'd like to thank everyone for their time. Thank you very much. [BLANK_AUDIO]