Yorkshire-Humberside NOTA roundtable

By Jenny Greensmith-Brennan, Safer Lives

You may have heard that the NOTA conference is to be held in Leeds this year. It is common practice that the local branch is involved in the sourcing of speakers, venues and entertainment, amongst other things. This was proving difficult in Yorkshire as the local branch had not met for 18 months and had no Chair or Secretary to get things moving again.

After discussions with the General Manager, a small group of local members decided to reconvene the branch but with a different ethos. One of collectivism, as little hierarchy as possible and roles for any person who wanted them. There is a variety of reasons for this, but they are for another day.

We arranged a branch event on February 28th and 27 people attended. We asked if people e would be happy to informally talk about their work, to share their roles with others so we all could go away having learned something.

Andy Green chaired the day and six people spoke for 10/15 minutes each. This included those working in custodial settings, the community, with young people, with adults, with those who have harmed, with those who have not harmed., academics, researchers, public sector and private sector workers. There was a mild amount of panic as some realised PowerPoint was not readily accessible but once we were passed that we talked and we ate and we drank (it was a Friday, there was a pub involved)

Kieran McCarten kindly came up from where he’d last managed to lay his head and spoke about the role of hope in what we are all trying to do; support people to move on from their past harmful behaviours or to seek a hand in not harming in the first instance.

The bonus of the day, for me anyway, were the conversations with people I’d never met before. The faces I could now put to names. There appeared to be an enthusiasm to support each other just for the sake of support.

It was simply a very good day. All it needed were a few emails to get 27 people in a room to talk about where we go from here. 27 people who had to organise their overloaded diaries to join us. We spent the last hour of the day figuring out how we could involve more people. How we would communicate, what we wanted our branch to be about, how we ensured fairness of future meeting locations and ideas to be discussed.

Perhaps most importantly, should Humberside really be known as East Yorkshire?

It was evident that we are branch members recovering from years of austerity that applied brakes to anything above the ‘day job’. Not all who were at the meeting will get funding to attend the Conference. One person had needed to take a day’s leave to simply attend this meeting. As an ex probation officer who now has the luxury of more choice when organising my diary and priorities, I understand the pressures on some people in the room. The parallel with some of our clients and service users is not lost. When barriers are in place to any kind of development or reflection it may be easier to stay exactly as you are. With that in mind, I reiterate the thanks to all who attended, speakers, listeners, and doodlers. We’ve got this.

I do hope to see you in Leeds this year.

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