Glasgow Trip

On the 9th 10th and 11th of October i flew off to Glasgow with Karen from the anti poverty team, to a Bridging the Policy Gap peer review meeting. What is this is here you say!!!
Europe has a strategy to tackle poverty and the UK is involved in this - well particularly 3 key areas - Glasgow, Swansea and the London Borough of Newham.
Swansea is looking at the Play Stratergy
Newham is looking at employment for the disabled
and Glasgow is looking at the Working for Families Project
Each area is evaluated by the other 2 areas to see what is working, what is not working, who can participate, who cant, future funding, things to improve etc. It is an excellent process as we are all suffering the same issues of high unemployment, low academic achievments, to get people back into work, education or training, housing issues, debt and money issues, childcare problems, transport issues and much much more.
Another reason this is a good process is it is not just about policy makers sitting making decisions about things they know nothing about. There is partnership working from everyone from Government to local government, to local service providers, voluntary organisations and most important of all the service users, clients and community members.... the people on the ground who know what all the barriers are, and how good or bad things actually work.
To find out more about Bridging the Policy follow the link: http://www.povertyalliance.org/btpg/
It was not just some free holiday and skive away from the office, believe me it was hard work. We didnt arrive until 930 pm and then the following days meetings and presentations went on until 7pm which was followed by a group meal back at the hotel, where you continued to talk about work until 10pm before you started again the following morning at 830 am - then to carry on all day before your night flight back to Cardiff at 9pm (with a load of drunken young Glasweigens!!!) - and arrived home at 1130pm!!!! A LONG 2 days. The final report will be presented in Feb 08.