Catriona's Samaritans Placement Blog

Bringng it all together

catriona4 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:14:05 +0000

A lot has happened since my last entry. We have met with the Hamilton branch, bringing in another case study alongside the dundee one, and perhaps edinburgh one. We have emailed a questionnaire out to all branches, with six replies so far, which might mean we have to give them a call. Myself and Tom have split up the branches between us to work on gathering contacts for each local branch, to add the the report which will be the same for every branch. The main report still needs a good bit of polishing, and Frances will be adding to it some of the organisations more logistical and strategic aspects. The deadline is getting closer so we have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks to have it completed and polished.

So far it has been a good experience of the runnings of a mainly volunteer-led organisation, which has major diversity within its structure. It has been good for understanding the logistics of working closely with another person and within a working group of people, and has highlighted to me the importance of regular and informed contact, as well as professionalism. I think the experience has given me ample preperation for a number of roles I would like to fufil working in the voluntary sector, especially more research focused roles. It has renewed my interest in volunteer development.

Gaining speed

catriona4 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:45:15 +0000

Last week saw us move forward with the project after feeling we had hit a bit of a barrier. We met the Chair for Borders who we had a great meeting with, and gave us some great ideas to flesh out the project in a way which is helpful for local branches, but still firmly within the remit of the project.

This allowed us to develop our ideas further to create a template for the project, and finally split up the branches between us. We hope to speak to one more branch together for another perspective from a branch who have build successful partnerships, perhaps featuring them as a case study. There is a main body of the project that will probably be generic for branches which we are in the process of researching and writing up. The rest, mainly contacts will be done for branches individually, and according to what interests them.

Originally I believed that creating a template for the project would take much less time than it actually did in practice, and I am thrilled that we can finally start writing the report at last!

Another week!

catriona4 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:59:39 +0000

Last week was full of meetings! We met with Fiona and had a nice chat about how the placement was going. I was keen to meet with the Glasgow Chair on thursday, as we felt it was important that we start to shape the project based on the needs of local branches.

Although the Glasgow Chair was very encouraging of the project, unfortunately she didn’t feel that some of the central information such as the SOAs were directly relevant to her branch, at least not for a few years. This took me by surprise, and made me concerned that the whole project may have to be re-thought. However a meeting with Frances made it clear that the original draft needed to be stuck to, but that we should concentrate for the time being on explaining and encouraging the need for and relevance of building partnerships with local government, whilst being responsive to local requests as much as possible.

Because there is such a variation between local and the regional level, this project may face a few challenges ahead regarding making it relevant and useful on both levels. However I am optimistic about our ability to achieve this.

Tomorrow we will meet with the Borders, whilst continuing to work on explanations of the basic concepts (SOAs, CPPs, CHPs etc).

First week!

catriona4 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:35:40 +0000

I’ve been busy this week! Me and Tom met with Frances, Kay and Joyce on Thursday to learn more about the Samaritans and discussed what they would like to see emerge from the project. I learned a lot about the daily volunteer side of the Samaritans, as well as the organisations past and how it runs in practice. I was surprised to see that those thousands of calls to the Glasgow branch per year are taken on three phones alone!

Although a seemingly simple task, I am still having difficultly accurately matching up local authorities to branches, and still waiting on various branches confirmation of this. I have been constructing the beginnings of a draft pack for Glasgow and the Borders, combining the work Tom and I have done so far. It is our hope to meet with both branches to have an in-depth discussion about what they want (and don’t want) from this pack, hopefully each being somewhat representative of urban and rural branches.

The Borders draft pack so far is short and simple, containing the local authority, NHS Board, Community Planning Partnership (CPP) and contacts, their Single Outcome Agreement (SOA), and Choose life contact. The Glasgow pack has the same, but since Glasgow has around six local authorities, and ten local CPPs and another main CPP, their are a lot more SOAs and contacts etc. that need to be mentioned!

In light of this I am looking forward to meeting with branches to find out what should be done, since there is an endless amount of information which could be done! Hopefully these meetings will allow us to shorten any necessary questions for other branches, so that a lot of their time isn’t taken up.

First day!

catriona4 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:38:46 +0000

Today was my first day on the Samaritans student placement! Discussed how to project was going to move forward with Frances and Tom at the Dundee office, and picked up lots of samaritans materials to read over! I constructed a list which matched Samaritans branches with local authorities, with the intention to receive clarifications regarding some of the surrounding local authorities tomorrow at a meeting at the Glasgow office.

Placement blog created

sheenplacements — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:45:40 +0000

This blog has been set up as a sub-blog of the SHEEN Placements project. This is a placement blog for Catriona, who will be starting shortly in a placement with the charity Samaritans in Scotland.