Rochen

Details: Social Cooperatives - Community based elder care: Theory into Practice workshop with international co-operative consultant John Restakis – 1 July 2013

Registration 9am for 9:30am start - 1pm   AGENDA click here

During 2012 UN Year of Co-operatives we were able to make useful progress in raising awareness and understanding of social co-operatives in Wales with Jean-Pierre Girard (Quebec) and John Restakis (Executive Director of the British Columbia Co-operative Association) speaking at 14 public meetings, which involved 750 participants. We are taking advantage of John Restakis being in Wales to arrange this workshop.
John Restakis
Title: ‘Social Cooperatives - Community based elder care: Theory into Practice’
Date: Monday July 1 2013, 9.30am – 1pm
Venue: Atrium building, University of South Wales, Cardiff, CF24 2FN

Workshop Chair: Professor Marcus Longley (Wales Institute Health and Social Care)
Session 1: Newport Social Care Co-operative Feasibility Study
This session will highlights underlying issues: how the social co-op form is different, what and how is be to be delivered and the business model required to make it work. A short presentation is followed by a roundtable conversation between Mick Taylor (Mutual Advantage), David Smith (Welsh Progressive Co-operators), Kate Thomas (Health and Social Care Facilitator, Newport & Monmouthshire, GAVO) and John Restakis (BCCA). Refreshments / Networking
Session 2: Welsh Developments in a wider context
Co-operatives are part of a huge international movement. This session will increase our understanding of the potential for developing a National Co-operative Elder Care Programme and the adaptation of franchising models for the provision of social care by local communities, drawing upon practical international experience. This will take the form of a conversation between John Restakis (BCCA), Mick Taylor (Mutual Advantage), President, Cymru/Wales Association of Directors of Social Services), the Older Peoples Commissioner.
Audience:
·     Co-operators and potential co-operators and Co-operative organisations

·     Local Authority and NHS Commissioners, ADSS and WG officials

·     Elected members and non-executive directors

·     Older People’s organisations

·     Advocacy organisations

·     Citizens organisations

·     Co-pro network

·     Co-op and Mutuals Commissioners

·     Others who share our approach to member-controlled enterprises



Please register your interest at…..

Space is limited and to ensure a balanced audience we will confirm attendance by June 25th 2013.

Reservations: click here  or email ? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Or telephone……………

To view, comment on, or download the background papers sent out with the flyers, click here

Leave your comments

0
terms and condition.

Comments

  • No comments found

Hilda Smith: a tribute by the Chair of the S Wales Area Committee, the Co-operative, 9 April 2013

As I’m sure you are all aware - with the death of Hilda Smith last month at the great age of 94 - Co-operation has lost a great advocate and worker. Hilda was a former member of this Committee and in such circumstances members would normally take the opportunity of a Committee meeting to pay tributes.

Our circumstances on this occasion are rather different as we have Hilda’s son David as one of our current members.

David has intimated to me that he has been very touched and moved by all the letters and cards of sympathy he has received from Co-operative colleagues expressing sadness at Hilda’s passing and for the wonderful contributions she has made.

He does not feel that he could emotionally cope with a series of tributes this evening and in these circumstances what I propose to do, as Chair, is to make a SINGLE tribute on behalf of us all, followed by a period of silence during which we can all privately reflect on Hilda as a person and a co-operator.

I have known Hilda for getting on for 20 years –not as long as some on this Committee have known her – but still a long time. When she joined the South Wales Committee of the Co-operative Group, I think in 2009, she must have been by a long stretch, its oldest “new” member, although she had been a member of many co-op committees before.

She was very active in what can now be seen as a golden age of Co-operation in the 1930’s and was particularly engaged in the campaigning illustrated in the wonderful films of the London Co-operative Society, with themes of Internationalism, Education Pacifism and Feminism. We have to remember, Hilda was not all that far behind the Pankhurst’s and she was born just after the ending of the First World War.

As many of us know, Hilda was completely passionate about what she believed in and was always a strong advocate for the same.  She was always a master of her brief and fastidious in studying her papers and making reasoned and detailed contributions.

She had a powerful intellect but was still very interested in making practical observations about what a store should stock, what services it should give to the customers/ members and how they could be engaged at shop level.

I remember her observing back in the early days of Recession, that the support work of the Co-operative Group, through such things as the Community Divided Fund would become far more vital, as Public Expenditure Cuts bite and she is being proven right.

To think when she arrived in South Wales in 1986, she did not come for a rest, because at the age of 76, she set about with vigour in a whole new co-operative and mutual scene.

 She was instrumental in establishing the Newport University of the Third Age, The Wales Food Alliance- together with David – which had a number of collaborations with the Group. She was a member of the WG Older Persons Advisory Committee and made a considerable contribution to policy formulation. Of late she has been engaged in modelling social enterprises to deliver home care.

I last saw Hilda at the Members meeting last year at St Fagan’s, when the meeting was somewhat hijacked by Disability Rights Protesters.  I will remember her contribution for a very long time. She was not prepared to sit idly by but rose to make an impassioned speech about how Co-operatives had been at the forefront of protecting and promoting the rights of the disabled for getting on for 100 years.

David, Hilda was highly principled, creative, dynamic not just a thinker and dreamer about the Co-operative Commonwealth but who has actually contributed to help make it happen over 60 or 70 years.

We are all the better for knowing her and she has left you with much to live up to!

Brian Rees

Go to top