A few weeks ago, me and the rest of the OHOV board as well as the other workers had a virtual meeting because of the fact that we were not able to meet up in person. We used an amazing platform called BAND. To start off Purdie, the person in charge, did a live stream saying hello to everyone and discussing some things. After that some of the others did live streams too. To be honest I was happy to see some other faces after months of lockdown.
After Purdie did the live stream, we did a voice call with everyone, it was very noisy because there was about sixteen people on the call, but we all managed to say hello to each other and when the call ended we were still able to text each other using the chatroom. All in all, it was really good.
We discussed some things about the Children’s Hearings System and about our new Zine that we are working on, but when we finished that we did some things that were fun like bingo and pebble painting. We took photos of our pebbles and put them in an album so we could all see what we had been doing. We also wrote a message to one of the staff who, at the time was still pregnant, but has since given birth to a baby girl.
I really like using our OHOV BAND. It’s an amazing way to keep in touch with the other members of the Board between meetings so that when we do have a meeting we don’t spend ages catching up because with BAND we can text each other anytime.
The week after the HomeStay Hangout, me, two other board members and Purdie did a consultation video call thanks to a recent update on BAND. We talked about our worries, and worries that younger kids might have going back to face to face Hearings and how to help them. Purdie put all our thoughts and ideas into a report and sent it to SCRA. It will be good to see what changes they make from our suggestions.
Thanks for reading!
HarryDexter.