Chief Executive Blog - April 2016
Colleagues,
There are moments in life when even the most simple of things can leave you feeling humble and which help to remind you that nothing should be taken for granted.
For me one such occasion occurred just the other day when I attended a ceremony in Perth where graduates of the Career Ready programme – our teenage daughter among them – were being presented with their certificates.
For those of you not familiar with the programme, Career Ready is a national initiative involving schools and businesses which helps young people bridge the gap between education and work by giving them access to on-the-job work experience through a two-year programme of paid internships and mentoring.
The aim is to give 16 to 18-year-olds the opportunity develop the skills which they will need when they leave school and enter the workplace.
Benefiting from two years of support and mentoring from the various companies and organisations, dozens of teenagers from all over Scotland who had successfully completed the programme were invited to the graduation ceremony.
Most parents have ambitions for their children and are proud to see them succeed. The graduation ceremony, however, brought a reminder that, for some families, the opportunity does not always exist.
The ceremony concluded with the selection of regional winners in the Career Ready programme and, finally, with an overall winner who happened to be a young man from Glasgow who was clearly surprised when his name was announced. In his brief acceptance speech, he revealed that he was the only member of his family who had ever stayed on at school beyond the age of 16 and achieved any qualifications.
There was a young man whose prize was a 10-week internship with Standard Life and who has a real prospect of exceeding his own expectations in life. For me and I am sure for many others in the audience, it was a reminder that everyone has untapped potential and the ability to succeed given the opportunity and the encouragement and support to seize it.
It is always gratifying to see young people getting on and doing well and the past few weeks also saw me attend the Moray Young Citizens of the Year awards ceremony where again the contribution that our young people make to the everyday life of local communities was there for all to see. If you know of any young person worthy of such an award, please look out for next year’s nominations.
Similarly with two other visits I made – one to the Moray Music Centre’s annual spring concert at Elgin Academy where Moray’s young musical talent provided excellent entertainment, the other to New Elgin Primary School where Laurence Findlay and I were guests at a sumptuous medieval banquet the pupils had prepared as part of a class project on castles.
I was also fortunate enough to attend a highly enjoyable performance by Scottish Opera at Lossiemouth Town Hall where a full house was treated to a wonderfully varied programme by four young members of the opera company, while diary events also included a visit to Elgin Museum for the unveiling of the Dandaleith Stone, a massive stone with Pictish carvings which was found during ploughing on farmland near Craigellachie and which will be housed permanently in the museum.
Work-related engagements have included service learning visits to the Ashgrove depot in Elgin where it was a pleasure to chat informally with many of the staff from fleet services, the roads section and environmental protection who are based there.
I have also been involved in a round of regular meetings, including one with the chairman of the Moray Joint Community Councils. I have also been in Edinburgh for a meeting of COSLA and in Aberdeen for a meeting of the North East Public Sector Forum. Along with the council leader and convener, I was also very pleased to meet for the first time David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland, with whom I enjoyed an informal and relaxed conversation during his visit to Moray.
Meanwhile, the corporate management team took themselves to the inspirational atmosphere of Elgin library for some out-of-the-box thinking as part of our deliberations on how the council can move forward with all the challenges that it is facing. We are all on a learning curve, CMT included, and we are all having to think hard about how things can be done differently to meet those challenges. Whatever else the future holds, it is clear to me that it is unlikely to be simply ‘business as usual’ over the next five years.
Engaging with the community at large on the shape of future council services and how they might be sustained is currently at the forefront of our deliberations and the ball will be set rolling next week when CMT, heads of service and managers get together – not only as senior staff employed by the council, but also as residents of Moray and users of council services – to discuss the way forward. I am confident the meeting will produce some imaginative and innovative thinking that will set the tone for the wider debate that will follow.
Finally, I will also be dragging myself into the age of social media over the next few weeks as I undergo training and bring myself up to speed on Facebook, Twitter etc. Watch this space.