Dear colleagues, 

I hope you have all had chance to enjoy some of the recent good weather, and some respite from the heat in the evenings.  

With each passing week, there is a huge amount being achieved by the organisation and I continue to be hugely impressed and grateful to everyone who continues to work with such dedication. There have been a number of particular milestones passed in the last week.  

The last set of school meal gift cards sent out by our Learning and Skills team which cover the last two weeks of August have now been issued. From September those pupils eligible for free school meals will receive these at their school. 

The project was a real collaborative effort with staff from Learning and Skills, ICT and Big Fresh Catering all involved. Together the team have sent out 33,706 vouchers over the past four months to over 3200 pupils. I have included below some of the replies the team received from parents receiving their final vouchers this week and I was delighted to see some of the messages of thanks that were sent in reply by parents . 

"Can’t thank you enough for your help and support...." 

"Many thanks for all your hard work. Special thanks for your patience in explaining how to use it. Very appreciated parents and young man." 

"We are so grateful for the vouchers throughout this time, many many thanks xx Take care of yourself xx" 

I know this work has been challenging to say the least. I also know that those colleagues that have been delivering the service have worked many late nights and early mornings and have acted as a vital line of support to families facing incredible hardship at a very difficult time. The impact of this work has been huge and those involved have really stepped up when their community needed them. The end of the scheme will no doubt bring new challenges but I am confident that we will once more be able to overcome them. 

This week has also seen the partial reopening of the Civic Offices reception to the public. The feedback we have received from the public has been very positive and I would like to reiterate my thanks from last week to those colleagues returning to face to face roles.  

This applies equally to all those working in our libraries who have welcomed members back through their doors this week. These facilities play a vital role in enriching many residents’ lives and the impact on wellbeing in our communities of their reopening should not be underestimated. This week alone 329 people visited to collect one of the Click and Collect bag of books, while 76 booked an appointment to browse the books on offer or use one of the PCs. 

The many ways in which our response to the pandemic has supported communities and improved the ways in which we work collaborative both internally and with our partners is something that we must take the time to recognise and learn from. A step towards this was taken this week with the launch of a research project into the impact of the Covid-19 response on partnership working. The Integrated Health and Social Care Partnership is leading on this work which has started with a pilot phase. All colleagues will have the opportunity to feed in to this in the coming months.  

Those of you who live in Barry may already have heard that there will be changes to how waste is collected in the town from October (there is detailed information about this on our website for those of you that haven’t). The changes follow the rollout of separated recycling collections in the rural Vale last year and the restart of this significant programme of work is another sign of our organisation moving back towards something resembling business as usual.  

And finally, another big project that has now restarted is the rollout of Office 365. It would be an understatement to say that our colleagues in ICT Services have had their work cut out for them over the past few months. 

However, to support our rapid culture shift from office based to homeworking, the team have been able to bring forward the schedule for setting up the whole organisation with Office 365 to the end of October, two months ahead of what was originally planned. Many of you will already be familiar with using MS Teams for video calls and instant messaging. The additional apps available within Office 365 are equally good for helping us all to work in new ways and the O365 project team are currently developing a training and support programme to make sure all staff are able to make use of them. This is of course in addition to the wide range of support and guidance for staff working remotely available on StaffNet+ and iDev.  

Thank you all once again and enjoy the weekend. Diolch yn fawr iawn.  

Rob Thomas.