CANCELLED – The GMWRAG meeting on Friday the 4th of March 2022 has now been cancelled.

A perfect storm of “stuff” has come together to force the very late cancellation of the latest GMWRAG meeting. Thanks to a clash with NAWRA in the morning we dithered in announcing that GMWRAG would have been at 1.30pm just after NAWRA and managed to confuse an awful lot of people including both our speakers and ourselves. In the circumstances, and with apologies to all concerned, we the “magic circle of GMWRAG” have decided that it’s better to cancel and reschedule with a degree more notice and competence.

Bearing that in mind we have rescheduled the March meeting for the afternoon of Friday the 8th of April 2022. Likely start time will be 12:30pm but we’ll confirm that in due course (honest). We can confirm no clashes. NAWRA is the week before. NWMHWRAG would fall the week after. All is once again well with the world. The meeting will once again be on MS Teams and the ringmaster of this very specific circus will of course be danmanville@gmlaw.org.uk. Email him with GMWRAG in the title and apparently his elves will send you a link.

We already have a presentation and speakers sorted for the April meeting where we will be joined by, at minimum, Paul McGarry, Jo Garsden and Elaine Morgan from GMCA. They’re coming to talk to us about the next stage of their GM wide Pension Credit take-up campaign and to gain insight from GMWRAG members around take-up work as well as understanding of the resources we are able to offer in our respective services.

We are hopeful at least one further speaker will be added but again we’ll let you know as soon as we have it sorted.

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Proposals for the future of GMWRAG – time to have your say!

Hi all,

It’s that time of the decade, perhaps, when we might take stock of past achievements and think through how to move forward in the years ahead.

For me, the last decade for our modest, unfunded group was a good one and well worth celebrating.  I am thinking back to numerous excellent meetings, external speakers, information shared, contributions to policy development, training sessions, outreach events, staff support and all the rest.  It is true that in recent years we have been able to do less than in former times, attendances have been a little down on occasions, training has dropped off and services are under greater strain, but the content of meetings has continued to be first rate, most meetings have good support and we have a stonking website, now re-invigorated, with potential.  We continue to have new members and interest.

Recently some services have struggled to take their usual turn at hosting and arranging meetings and this has lead to uncertainty.  Of course, several of us have been talking about how to proceed.  I suggest that we act as follows:

1.  Affirm that GMWRAG should continue, that it’s useful.

2. Break the founding principle that meetings should rotate around each borough in turn bi-monthly.

3. Ask some of the larger services to agree to act as guarantor to host and arrange a meeting once a year or so – core meetings (Manchester will volunteer for one).

4.  Go to a sequence of meeting every three months, 3rd Friday in, say, January, April, June, October, confirmed well ahead.

5. Invite other services to contribute with arranging, or hosting, core meetings where possible.

6. Note that some meetings can be half day or ‘business only’ if necessary.

So over to you, it’s your group!  Pls share your thoughts…

Thank you.

Terry Patterson.

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