Minutes of PCU Committee Meeting 24/11/19

Minutes of PCU Committee Meeting, 24th November 2019

Present: Richard Bagnall Oakeley, Maxim Ilyashenko, Sasha Kaplin, Juliet Lyons, Reem Shelhi,

Apologies: Victoria Childs, Eleanor Lindlar, Audrey West

1. Minutes of last Meeting: agreed and posted on the website

2. Matters arising

a) Statement about confidentiality and safety

b) Website

c) Childcare?

d) Communication

e) AGM

3. Health and Safety:

Eleanor to take on the role of safety officer. Sasha will clarify with Eleanor her point about costs (health and safety management protocols)

4. GDPR: Andy has sent a GDPR notice Milton who will put it on the website

5. REPORTS:

a) Finance (Andy)

We have in the region of £800 left until December end of year. We are on budget

b) Membership Report (Kate):

590 total membership. 548 total paid-up. 43 in arrears. Kate hopes to have a clean slate by January 2020. Standing orders once to move everyone on to a standing order and to have a stand that procedure which involves paying by standing order. Go paperless: streamlining the way people join and pay. Go cardless: 1% charge per transaction. Used by London Renter’s Union. Perhaps ask GFTU how they handle payments. Aiming to have a new system in place by January 2020:

c) Casework Report (Sasha)

Concerned that there are some people we can't do anything for.

Attended employment appeal hearing

6.Publishing a test case (Andy).

The case is at ACAS. A fee for unpaid wages has been agreed, but the stubbling block is a no-gagging orer as part of the agreement. Once this is resolved, we will be able to publicize the case. We have used ACAS, who will write up the agreement.

7.GFTU (Andy):

We are officially affiliated with the GFTU.

We need to look at their training programme to ascertain who would like to do what. Getting training for volunteers and organisational issues. We need to look at the list of trainings they provide.

8.Training for PCU (Andy)

Eleanor has put together a way of how we should develop the process of training.

Skills analysis. 5-point plan

Skills analysis of the Executive Committee and PCU Membership

Suggested training programmes based on skills analysis (Current and future needs)

Budget based

Those that get trained cascade the training down, especially where it has been paid for by PCU.

Look at what CPD days the PCU can provide

Andy/Eleanor to send email round.

Andy: At the executive meeting: need to do a short resume of PCU. Andy will discuss with Victoria. Will provide a history of PCU and where the main work is focussed on.

Juliet: Suggested he make the introduction specific to our work and the problems we encounter as psychotherapists (confidentiality, safeguarding, unpaid work). It might be helpful for the GFTU to know what we focus on in the PCU.

9. ADMIN POINTS (Kate)

Database: To ensure that we are GDPR are compliant

Bio Reminders (Kate/Milton)

Asana: Has not been picked up. We've had a trial of it and we don't need it or are

not ready at this stage. Agreed. Kate to feedback to Milton

10. Update on Campaigns

Discussed having a campaign member on the exec committee to properly overlook and prioritise our campaigns. Possible starting with a focus on unpaid work campaign.

11. Fee Structure:

There are questions to think about around the fees

and the structure of those fees which we might look into at a later date. Needs to be thought about and discussed further.

12. Future of PCU

General discussion floating ideas on what we are going to do

The Future of the PCU

We have a discussion on some aspects of politics in the union and its limitations in involvement in political, its political remit, what is political, how political is the therapist

13. AGM

AGM will be in Liverpool on Saturday, 25th April

We are in agreement with the invitation to Susie Orbach.

A.m. event – CPD

Finish at 4.00 p.m.

We will continue with in other discussions online

14. Communication

A lengthy and detailed discussion offering different opinions and perspectives about the importance and the abuse of ‘safety’ in online discussions and email exchanges.

15. Newsletter

Juliet and Richard to write newsletter for January 2020

16.Equal opportunities

Discussed the equal opportunities form that Milton and Sasha have been working on. Agreed Sasha and Milton to look into ways of simplifying.

Equal opportunities statement to be added to the website.