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Notes from Hannan Meeting with Sharon and Anne, 11/30/12

Service Coordinator/Liaison Team Building

• Save the date! We are tentatively meeting with the Liaisons at New Horizons Co-op in Madison Heights on Wednesday, January 23^rd. Time TBD, but likely lunch through afternoon. This is not a regular work day for all of you, but if you are able to adjust your schedules that day, it would be terrific. The reason for selecting that day is that CSI would also like the SCs to have the opportunity to see a functional co-op meeting at New Horizons. New Horizons is a very “co-opie” co-op, with a strong council, FCRC, and volunteer/member involvement in general. Many of you are hosted by co-ops that are in a cycle of minimal member involvement, so this will give you the opportunity to see what the co-ops look like when they are achieving their mission.
• Monthly Meetings. This is your best opportunity for team building. CSI will work on Liaison participation from their end and suggest the liaisons put “action items” on the agenda similar to what we briefly discussed during our conference call: “propose regularizing agenda into categories/themes discussed each month
  • Calendar – meetings, workshops, PTO for SC, liaison and front office volunteers, important Co-op or CSI events
  • Education – needs, plans, who takes responsibility for what
  • Resources – share
  • Policies/procedures – opportunity for clarification
  • General updates
  • Other”

Infrastructure Issues

• Pete picked up a new phone for Renee that has the ability to regulate the answering machine. I let Sharon know that Harriet, Kari, and Alexa need similar phones. Is this correct? Pete will pick up phones for everyone still in need (ie you don’t have the ability to turn off the answering machine sound when members are in your office).
• Sheila will purchase a white noise machine and trial it at Washington Square Co-op. Karen, you may suggest your office since you’ll be around more. CSI does not want to place the machines in the hallway, which is common practice to create the greatest “white noise” affect without bothering the member and SC who are meeting, because of the capacity for the machine to be clipped and stolen. Hence, Sheila is going to try placing the machine just inside the office door in the entryway/kitchen. This may work for large SC offices.
• Computer help. CSI’s computer support person, Gary, is overwhelmed with work right now. Hannan is paying for npserv to provide phone support for SCs. Hence, if you have any issues that have to do with your email (Zimbra), remote connection (where you access Hannan’s shared files and save all your sensitive documents), AND any general computer questions, please call npserv first. Only call Gary if you know that it is an actual hardware/software problem (ie you can’t turn on your computer) or npserv tells you that the problem is in the domain of CSI and they can no longer assist you. Remember that anything related to AASC Online should be a phone call to Jenell. I know you have been making good use of that! Finally, if anyone is in need or interested in computer classes to increase their work capacity, please let me know. We can link you up with a computer class or specially design a workshop for you if we know your needs. This is part of professional development and I highly encourage it.
• Meetings with CSI. Sharon is very happy to meet with us quarterly. Because face to face conversations are best when trying to collaborate, I’m going to work with Ann and Brenda to schedule Sharon’s meetings with us to coincide with some of our educational workshops when we are already gathered together at Hannan House.

Member challenges understanding the role of the SC, Liaison, and their own Leadership

• It is the Liaison’s role to provide member education. Hence, please continue to refer members to the Liaison if they have concerns regarding the co-op or CSI.
• Continue to bring any concerns that have been raised by members to monthly meetings so that the President, Committee Chairs, and Liaison are present to help clarify who’s role(s) the concerns are related to.
• CSI will ask Liaisons to take notes at monthly meetings so that if member issues are brought up, they are also alerted at the management level.
• Liaisons have concerns regarding SC attendance at general, council and floor meetings. It was decided at our meeting that SCs should attend a floor meeting only once (by council permission), because the floor meetings are “sacred” space. They are like the members’ living rooms. No CSI staff has ever attended. Please do not attend even if asked by the floor rep. It has not yet been decided whether SCs should continue to attend the general and council meetings. Please continue not to attend until you hear otherwise. However, I have advocated for your ability to attend as a general audience member. CSI and I will let you know when we have resolution on this.
• CSI has just last week started continuing education classes for council members. They have been wildly popular and successful! Hopefully this will help with some confusion.
• We discussed the need for more and continued member education (at all levels, especially amongst leadership) regarding the role of the service coordinator. It makes perfect sense that members continue to come to you for CSI-related issues, simply because you are readily available, have an open door policy, and have become trusted. One of the items we will discuss at our SC/Liaison team building meeting in January is the creation of a member education program about service coordination. What will likely happen is that we will create a SC/Liaison team of 2-4 people who will create a workshop that can be held at the co-ops and for the leadership volunteers.

FCRC

• Please continue to only accept written referrals on the proper FCRC form from the president (you cannot accept verbal referrals nor written referrals from anyone else).
• If the president has challenges understanding the FCRC process, please continue to bring it up as topic at your monthly meetings (not targeted the president, but reviewing the process).
• If you are making progress with a member you have received a referral for from the president, you do not need to make a written report back.
• If your president or liaison feels there is a member not making enough progress while working with the SC on a lease-related issue, they can continue with their own process of closed council meetings and/or eviction. SCs/SWs may have a different concept of progress than co-op management has. This is the nature of the two different roles and is OK.
• Sharon will work with the FCRC to create an additional feedback loop within the FCRC chart that would enable the president to refer a member back to the FCRC after they’ve worked with the SC. The most likely scenario for this is if the SC feels it would be helpful to involve the family, but the member doesn’t give the SC permission to call the family, the SC can write on their report back to the president that they recommend the FCRC calls the family (which co-op policy allows).