Unison Community Conference started with focussed meetings on service areas. I attended the housing association session which looked at issues facing housing staff across the country, discussed best practice and challenges still very prevalent in the sectors. Issues discussed ranged from universal credit challenges, leaseholder issues, staffing issues, support networks, mental health issues, working with tenants, staff bonuses. Outcomes from this were for a specific newsletter for housing related information and support to be put together to share best practice and inform of useful information.
Following this useful session the Community Seminar began and conference welcomed Christine McNea spoke to conference about the challenges affecting those working in the community sector. Questions were raised to the group around, rough sleeping, sleep ins, community sector increasing inside, housing associations related pay scale increase for work to be done, and other community related issues.
Saturday began we attended the Workshop on Deepening engagement in your unison, this turned out to be very useful and gave us some ideas for future planning for the branch to ensure that we can reach out to members across all sectors of our branch and make sure we include them all in future branch activities where possible.
There was then a speech from RT HON Mark Drakeford AM (First Minister of Wales) who covered issues which related to the Housing Crisis, Right to Buy, community issues, success stories from Wales and also fielded questions from delegates,
You can see more about Mark here…
and you can read his profile here…
https://www.assembly.wales/en/memhome/Pages/MemberProfile.aspx?mid=253
Following this a lunch break the main business began, the annual report and other information was now brought to conference, you can read this here…
https://www.unison.org.uk/events/2020-community-conference/
Motions now to be discussed were the following…
- Engaging Branches in the community sector in LGBT+ Recruitment and Organising – Motion Carried
- Recruitment and Organising – Motion Carried
- Health and Safety Representation – Motion Carried
- Racism in Community Workplaces – Motion Carried
- Community Services for Women – a lifeline removed – Motion Carried
- Community Employers, Accessibility Passports and Access to Work – Motion Carried
- Sleeping in, losing out – Motion Carried
- Making it fair for social care – Motion Carried
- Right to buy and shared ownership in Housing Associations in England – Motion Carried
- Supporting People – Motion Carried
- National standards for social care – protecting disabled workers – Motion Carried
- Branch Structures – Motion Carried
- Inclusive Workplace Policies for Non-Binary members in the community Sector – Motion Carried
- Recruitment and organising Black members in the fragmented workforce – Motion Carried
- promoting the EU settlement scheme to community members – Motion Carried
- Stop ‘First Homes’ proposals – Motion Carried
This brought to a close the Community Conference 2020 until next year.