PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT GROUP

Meeting with my Personnel Management Group this morning in the Welcome Centre. Leicester Council of Faiths has a lot on its plate just now - and mine is stacked especially high! We have a very focused couple of hours, concentrating on some of the activities, events and opportunities coming our way over the next few months, e.g.

• Our Leicester Day (Sun 11 Sep)
• Leicester University International Students Fair (Wed 28 Sep)
• De Montfort University Student Community Fair (Thu 29 Sep)
• Everybody’s Reading Week (Sat 1 – Sun 9 Oct)
• Leicester University Faiths Trail launch (Fri 7 Oct)
• Leicester Speaks: AKA Local Democracy Week (Wed 12 – Wed 19 Oct)
• International Hate Crime Day (Fri 28 Oct)
• Community Media Week (Wed 2 – Tue 8 Nov)
• National Inter Faith Week (Sat 20 – Sun 26 Nov)

Personnel Management Group

Meeting with my Personnel Management Group this morning in Pilgrim House. For the first time, we meet in the downstairs office, as the Welcome Centre is being used by LARA (Leicestershire Active Retirement Association) who book it every other Friday morning.

For one reason and another, we've been unable to meet according to our schedule over the summer. I have another appointment on the outskirts of the city at 1300 for which I can't be late. We have a lot to discuss, both general and particular and there's plenty left over at the end of the meeting. So we fix another meeting for a fortnight from now.

PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT GROUP CONSIDERS NHS GUIDELINES

This morning, there's a meeting of my Personnel Management Group scheduled at the Welcome Centre, 1100-1300. However, I'm under pressure to progress work on a set of guidelines from a booklet given me by Abida Hussein at Leicestershire NHS Partnership Trust, containing advice and guidance to be followed when patients of different background, religion or tradition present for the first time at hospital, in A&E or at their GP surgery. I ask for the scheduled meeting to be postponed but for the members attending to go over the text of the booklet, from the perspective of their own religions. That allows me to have the advantage of the Bahá'í , Christian, Hindu and Jewish points of view here this morning.


I have to leave promptly at 1300, to dash down ot the Guildhall to meet Asaf Hussain and visitors from the Iranian Cultural Centre in London, who are doing a recce there for the proposed festival of Iranian culture coming here in March. So I have to usher my colleagues out with little ceremony, so I can lock up. On the way out, we bump into one of the Barry Naylors, on his way into the SPCK book shop on the ground floor.

my management group

At the Welcome Centre this morning for a meeting with my Personnel Management Group. Although our Chair, Manjula Sood, has to offer her apologies for this meeting, still we have the benefit of a diversity of backgrounds, traditions in the members here today: Bahá'í, Christian, Jewish, Sikh. Major topics on our agenda today include: National Inter Faith Week; working relationships with Leicester City Council, Leicester Partnership and NHS Leicester City; our venture further into social media; involvement in writing the booklet series, "Engaging with Faith Communities in Leicester"; engagement in the developing Centre of Excellence in Community Cohesion. That's a lot to fit into two hours - exhaustingly so!

my management group

Meeting with my management group at the Welcome Centre. We do this every six weeks or so. Not quite full attendance today (one of the members is visiting family overseas) but still a rich and diverse mix: the four members here today are from the Anglican, Bahá'í, Hindu and Orthodox Jewish communities respectively.

This is our first meeting since the demonstration in Leicester by the English Defence League (EDL) and, not surprisingly, much of our time is taken up with the work I did in relation to that event. We also review activities for Leicester Speaks (AKA Local Democracy Week) and look forward to the next big event on our calendar: National Inter Faith Week, at the end of November, when we have our exhibition again in Highcross.

my management group

Meeting in the Welcome Centre, 1400-1600, it's my management group. Five members (all of whom are able to be present today), members of the Council of Faiths who represent the local Bahá'í, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh communities. It's always a lively meeting - and that's not a euphemism for bad tempered or contentious. My post generates a lot of discussion and the members of my management group contribute to it with strength and feeling. I really appreciate the diversity of experience and views that they bring to this meeting and that they lend to me and my work. Their input and support is crucial for keeping my post moving forward.

my management group (1)

At the Welcome Centre, lunchtime, for the first meeting of my management group since the end of October last year. The gap between meetings can be blamed on radical changes in the governance of the Council of Faiths, ushered in at the AGM in that month (and the election of a new Chair at that same meeting), the demands of the festive season and the disruption caused by the snow and ice (not least the unbearable cold in the Welcome Centre itself) have meant we've gone longer without this kind of meeting than we would have liked. But here we are at last, and it's good to get back on track.

When I took up this post, nigh on three years ago, my management group consisted of three officers of the Council of Faiths: Chair, Vice-Chair and Secretary. This group is now six-strong: two are current officers (Chair and Vice-Chair); three are former officers; five of them are Directors of the Council of Faiths. In terms of religious affiliation, members of my management group come from the Anglican, Baha'i, Hindu, Orthodox Jewish, Roman Catholic and Sikh communities. The size of the group may make it difficult to get everyone together in the same place at the same time, but the range of experience and perspective on offer to me through the variety of members is really valuable. My line manager, for day-to-day contact and ongoing oversight, is Cllr Manjula Sood, current Chair of the Council of Faiths and Leicester's Deputy Lord Mayor.

The photo shows the Town Hall Square which is just outside the Welcome Centre. It's a lovely view - and I can't help saying it's all the lovelier for the snow and ice having gone.