Sp council meeting minutes may 2016

CRSPCC Called Meeting Wednesday, May 11, 2016 Location: Prospect Human Services

Minutes 1. Welcome and Introductions – Service Provider Council Chair, Erin Waite opened the meeting and welcomed everyone. Introductions were made.

2. Approval of March Minutes – MOTION by Aaron Semkuley and seconded by Jayne Myatt that the minutes of the March 2016 meeting be approved. Carried.

3. Contract change, continuation of procurement process; next steps - agencies in this region have not yet received Service Requests, although agencies who operate in more than one region have sometimes received them in their other regions - service requests set out the amount of the contract - Children’s Services are going ahead with the new contract, they do have concerns about the new contract but not to the degree that PDD funded agencies have - Children’s Services are receiving a 24 month contract - CSCO has been able to redefine some of the administrative costs (ie: rental space was all admin previously, now able to divide into admin and program space and charge accordingly) - for the new contract, communication will go out from ACDS regarding the legal opinion - legal information should be shared as regions contributed to the legal fund - need to manage funds (ie: lawyer being called to meetings with Government) or money will run out fairly quickly - perhaps a letter needs to be sent to the Minister regarding the lack of consistency with the agreement both across the province and within the regions as well as a lack of understanding with PDD staff about procurement - there is no open RFP so there is no reason for PDD staff to say “they can’t talk to agencies because of procurement” - Alex Hillyard was not successful in receiving the new position of Executive Regional Director, not sure now what his role will be and not sure what the head of disability services in each area will be called - within all the regions of Alberta only one PDD person was hired into an Executive Regional Director position – Dale Drummond from North Central – most are from Children’s Services - new Executive Regional Director for Calgary is Pat Ferminger from Alberta Works - suggestion made to approach her as a speaker for our AGM in June - entire management group is in Edmonton for meetings today and tomorrow to talk about restructuring Human Services - more information should be coming out very soon, Alex also indicated that after the meetings he would like to come and talk with Service Provider Executive or Membership

4. Committees and other Updates a. ACDS Training: - lots of workshops and training opportunities coming up - Intercultural Specialist Training – rescheduled to September - PBS “Train the Trainer” being offered in Edmonton - Information on various training opportunities will be sent out with the minutes from this meeting - Mental Health First Aid training, a joint venture with ACDS and Align, is either offered free or heavily subsidized right now and is offered through Alberta Home Visitation Association - subsidized training is available now but will probably end in June - 310 attendees at the conference this year, numbers are a bit down but it was very well received Committees: - old contract committee has reestablished themselves - work has begun on the Safety Standards, Phase II with the following four subcommittees: Duty of Care, Stan-data, Standards and Accreditation, Roles and Responsibilities - first meetings for all were held last week - Review of Supportive Living has started b. Workforce Council - will be meeting this coming Friday - strategies will go out to Service Provider Council members - current committees include Leadership & Succession Planning - looking at adding other committees and will send out a call for members c. ADWA Update - are developing a safety app, a new initiative just starting - conducting a survey asking people what their favourite work apps currently are - e-bulletin will go out next week, looking for a small group of volunteers to sit on the design committee, will meet in June - online survey will be put together to look at priorities for this - targeting 2017 to have it finished - Certification: piloting new process, specific to the “worker” position - get member management system redesigned - develop certification preparation manual for the individual and their supervisor - certification will be free for those who participate in the pilot project - bulletins have been developed to explain the process - looking for a mix of people to be involved in the pilot project: new in field/longer in field; urban/rural; different sized agencies; different types of services - after the initial group has gone through the process, will look at others such as practitioners (complex needs/situations) - individual would go through basic certification and then move on to the advanced specialties - the certification program is based on the ACDS Worker Qualification System

- one advantage to the sector includes credibility in the field, right now unless the individual has post-secondary education there is no way to measure competency - for employers, once certification is in place you know the person has the skills required and you can focus on whether or not they are a “fit” to the agency and to the person/people they will be supporting - pilot will help to determine the cost of certification - a lot of fields use a “testing” process with multiple choice questions, but that format doesn’t have a lot of value necessarily for this field - individual must meet all standards to be certified - may use a behavioural interview approach that a person could answer with a short verbal or written story - plan is to have one classification system - working with college/university groups to make them aware of what the parameters are for coursework to count towards certification

5. AGM Plans - hoping to firm up plans (date/time/speaker/etc.) by next week - will send out survey prior to the AGM to look at areas council could be involved in - encourage everyone to bring a colleague to the AGM - membership renewal is due prior to the AGM so that you can vote, if you are unsure if your membership dues are paid contact Alexi Davis, Council Treasurer.

6. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:45am 7. Next Meeting: Annual General Meeting – June – date, time, location & speaker TBA