Agenda item

Gary Hughes, Principal Adviser - National Peer Challenge Programme

The Chair invited Gary Hughes (GH), Principal Adviser – National Peer Challenge Programme, and Helen Jenkins (HJ), Head of Leadership, to introduce the update.

GH provided members with an update on progress with actions agreed as part of the review of Peer Support. GH highlighted the following areas:

·       Recruitment and retention of an experienced, skilled and diverse range of peers was progressing well and officers were confident that the requirements of the Corporate and Finance Peer Challenge programme could be met.

·       Robust quality assurance procedures were now in place.

·       Work around a technical solution to updating member peer profiles should be complete by September 2023.

·       A new peer challenge training programme was being developed centred around (i) virtual peer briefings; (ii) face to face training sessions – a rolling programme based on need; (iii) a regional training programme. In addition, a pilot peer challenge shadowing process was being set up.

HJ updated members on the peer mentoring training programme. The first session took place in May 2023 with further dates scheduled at quarterly intervals during the year. The mentoring handbook was currently being refreshed with the aim of publishing in Autumn 2023.

Members’ comments and questions:

·       How were the principles of robustness, sensitivity, proportionality and consistency being implemented in the peer performance appraisal process? GH said that the possible role of accreditation and assessment would be considered in partnership with the national and regional peers, once the current training programme had bedded in. GH pointed out that there would be an additional cost to implementing accreditation.

·       Clarification was sought on the process for peers receiving training. GH explained that officers were working with the political group offices and regional lead peers to identify those peers who could most benefit from training, and these names would be put forward very soon. Places would be offered on a mixture of virtual and face to face sessions.

·       The importance of existing informal support networks for peers, in conjunction with the proposed formal training, was also strongly emphasised.

·       It was suggested that making greater use of remote training sessions could help to reduce the training backlog more quickly.

The Chair thanked members for their input and emphasised the importance of strong cross-party support in taking forward the review at pace.

Decision:

Improvement & Innovation Board noted progress in implementing actions arising from the peer support review.