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DERBYSHIRE CARERS ASSOCIATION MINUTES OF THE BOARD MEETING HELD ON TUESDAY 28th MAY 2013 Present:
Marilyn Hambly Paul Lobley Ian Gill Tony Brookes
Chair Trustee Trustee Trustee
In Attendance:
Helen Robinson Deborah Gough Nicky Parsons
Chief Executive DCA – Carer Support Manager DCA – Administration Officer – Minutes
13/25 – Apologies:
Vicky L Davison, Hilary Spencer, Joanne Goodison
HR confirmed that VLD was well now and on holiday. 13/26 DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST None were declared. 13/27 FUNDRAISING PRESENTATION BY JERRY ALLEN Jerrys presentation was followed by a general discussion where PL accepted the Fundraising Strategy and IG seconded it. Jerry to update the Board at the next Board Meeting. 13/28 MINUTES OF MEETING HELD ON TUESDAY 26th MARCH 2013 Corrections required; Page 4 Concentrated was spelt wrong. 13/29 MATTERS ARISING FROM THOSE MINUTES Page 1; HR informed everyone that DCA had not heard from The Henry Smith Charity yet. Page 3; MH asked if the affiliation figure had been corrected – HR confirmed it had. Page 4; DG confirmed that although Derby had cleansed their database the figures had not gone down as the TUFT team had increased the new carers by at least the amount it had gone down by. HR confirmed that there were currently 7740 carers on the database. TB asked if any Webinars had been advertised as he was to be notified about any appropriate Webinars/Training for Trustees from Peninsular. HR said there can`t have been any appropriate
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Webinars that have happended or TB would have been notified. DG said she was taking part in a Wellbeing Webinar on Thursday and that she would send TB details on this. IG asked if work on the Website was still ongoing and HR said she thought it would always be subject to change. IG asked if the statement on the front page about our funding was misleading? HR said she didn`t think it was misleading but that it was the correct way to encourage donations from members of the public. IG confirmed he would try and find time to check the Website to see if the information on there was all correct. Page 5; HR confirmed that the complaint process for DCA was complete, however, she believed it was now in the hands of Derbyshire County Council. 13/30 FINANCE – MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTS TO 31/01/13 & UPDATED BUDGET FOR 2013-14, PROPOSAL FOR FINANCE SUBCOMMITTEE TO BE ESTABLISHED. Management Accounts - End of March – Unrestricted - HR said that although additional Money had come in for extra projects – Salary costs were actually down. TB queried that if the figures varied by up to 1% are they queried? PL said please raise all queries no matter how small. HR pointed out that affiliation costs were higher due to the new £1,000 affiliation fee for Carers Trust. The book keeping costs would right itself when the invoice from Barber Harrison and Platt came in. The Petty Cash figure now looks much better as Louise has allocated almost everything to the correct nominal code. The Newsletter is now creating income through advertising which is shown in the Donations figure. MH asked if recruitment was in the budget and PL said in the 2013/2014 budget there was £1,200 which wasn`t much and would have to be looked at again for the next budget as there were now 38 staff and recruitment was now likely to reoccur each year. HR said that the reason there was money left in the training budget was that DCA were accessing a lot of free training for such things as Safeguarding. The Trustees had also accessed some free training offered by Chesterfield Volunteer Centre which was; Essential Responsibilities of Trustees/Intermediate Trustees Training/Improving Board Performance. MH and IG had attended the first of these training sessions and were booked on the others and were to feedback to other Board Members when attended. TB had provided Data Protection Training at the Chesterfield office and IG had attended. Volunteers Expenses – HR explained this was a bigger than usual budget as some came from DOH therefore this showed a small underspend. IG asked if some of this could be spent taking volunteers out for a meal to say thank you. HR said DCA had to be careful as some volunteers
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would think this was a waste of funds. MH suggested this money be spent organising a promotional event that volunteers could attend. HR confirmed that only Volunteers receive Christmas cards now. TB asked if volunteers’ training was being monitored and NP confirmed that the Volunteers training was entered onto the training matrix and evaluations had been sent for last week’s data protection training. Restricted Funds – HR went through this funding and explained that the Transport and Sitting/Stress Busting funds were still being paid, however, we didn`t know how long this would carry on for. Carers Breaks funding was still being paid and although DCA didn`t gain much for admin or extras for this funding it is important in identifying hidden carers. The Derby City Carers Breaks money was also still coming in and in it`s second year now it was running well now the staff change had taken place. The End of Life funding had now finished and these courses had gone extremely well and had been very successful. DG and Marie Curie are evaluating the project and the training was pioneering and stands DCA in good stead for future bids. Carer’s voice now had £12,000 and had been allocated a specific worker. P/L said he would try to attend the next mtg. MH asked HR if she would please check the overall total and this didn`t seem to add up by a small amount. HR said she would check the formulas. Budget for 2013-14– HR went through the budget forecast. HR said the biggest outlay was and still remains Staff Salaries and Motor Expenses. £10,000 had been allocated for fundraising expenses. IG mentioned that the printing of material could become disjointed and all offices are now ordering materials. HR said Joanne had issued branding guidelines and there was a file on the shared drive for all such materials to go into. HR informed everyone that the Newsletter was now going to 3 times per year due to costs. PL asked if the Newsletter was being e-mailed out. NP confirmed that everyone who has an e-mail address on the system has the Newsletter e-mailed instead of a hard copy. HR confirmed that cash flow was forecast to fluctuate during the year due to significant ‘chunks’ of funding but that there was expected to be sufficient funds for the medium term. PL proposed to adopt the 2013/2014 budget and IG seconded. 13/31 RISK REGISTER
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This was to be taken away and discussed at the next Board Meeting. The managers will also review this on 3rd June with the consultant Zoe who worked with DCA on the original document. 13/32 BOARD SUB COMMITTEES Fundraising Committee – PL proposed that the Fundraising Sub Committee be disbanded now that a Fundraiser had been appointed, IG seconded. IG proposed a Finance Sub Committee be set up and IG seconded, PL to Chair and to let everyone know when the dates have been set for the quarterly meetings. The Finance Sub Committee will oversee quarterly accounts, progress of the fundraiser and review relevant policies. HR Committee (Including Simply Health Proposal) – HR put the Simply Health proposal forward and said that as DCA staff hadn`t received an increase in salary for the last couple of years the Simply Health plan would be a very nice perk and would show staff how much they are valued and would cost very little to DCA. HR confirmed that this would not be able to be implemented now until around September which would mean the costs would only be for half a year for the first year. TB proposed this and PL seconded. MH informed everyone that the HR Sub Committee was looking at Policies. HR has a list of Policies which could be reviewed by the new Finance Committee which would lighten the load. PL suggested Zoe Van Zwanenberg be asked to review the Policies she originally wrote as she would know if they needed updating straight away. TB asked if the Business Continuity Plan was to be updated and HR said yes. MH asked if the Policies and Procedures and Right and Responsibilities could be e-mailed to the trustees. NP to action. DG confirmed that DCA were currently consulting with staff regarding changing the frequency of Personal Development Reviews. 13/33 CARERS TRUST BRANDING HR spoke about the letter from Carers Trust regarding rebranding by Crossroads Care East Midlands to Carers Trust East Midlands. HR said when DCA joined PRTC they were very anti competition, this, however, now seems to be changing and it seems as though DCA couldn`t do anything about this apart from show our concern. IG asked if DCA ought to take the Carers Trust branding and if this was the way forward? MH suggested Carers Trust Derbyshire? HR said she would write to show DCA were not happy about the Crossroads change of name and DCA would need to think about the implications of this. MH said that this undermines DCA and our affiliation to the Carers Trust. 13/34 HEALTH AND SAFETY There were no Health and Safety Issues to discuss.
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IG asked if DCA should nominate a Health and Safety officer. TB offered to take this position, PL proposed and IG seconded. PL said H&S should stay as it is on the agenda each Board Meeting. 13/35 OPERATIONAL MATTERS TB asked what `RAS` was and DG explained it is a Resource Allocation System. IG asked if the Carers Ball was taking place again this year and HR confirmed it was to take place on 25th October 2013 at The Winding Wheel. DG explained that the DOH have confirmed that any underspend can go towards a fourth year for the project. 13/36 COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLAINTS There were no Complaints. There were new compliments. 13/37 AOB IG proposed an additional Board Meeting to consider in depth the strategic matters facing DCA, including where DCA was hoping to be in 5 years time. Were DCA to merge with another organisation or take over another organisation? HR suggested it be for the Board, SMT and perhaps others to get involved. IG proposed that this take place and PL seconded. IG asked if this meeting needed to be facilitated. PL said it would first need an agenda. Before this was booked HR was to discuss it with VLD. HR put forward a Trustee Application from Gillian Sullivan. Gillian had an HR background and HR said she believed she would be a great asset. Everyone read the application. MH proposed She becomes a trustee and IG seconded. Everyone agreed. The meeting closed at 12.30pm
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DATE OF NEXT MEETING 10.00am Tuesday 6th August 2013 at DCA Head Office, White House, The Willows, Slack Lane, Ripley.
MINUTES APPROVED..............................................................................DATE..........................
SIGNED .................................................................................................