I kicked off this week with a meeting in London with Chief Executives from other local authorities. We met to swap the things we have learnt from our various major transformation programmes. As you can imagine, I attend a lot of these types of event but see an important part of my job is taking these opportunities to shout about Staffordshire, our innovations and your successes; as well as steal ideas. I am always delighted and reassured to see that Staffordshire is ahead of the game in so many areas and tackling the challenges of growing numbers of older people and reduced budgets in a much more calm and controlled way that some other councils. You are all doing Staffordshire proud.
In complete contrast, I spent an energetic evening at Knutton Youth Club on Wednesday. I met many of the young people who use the Youth Club and the Youth Workers who run it. Their role is very much about supporting and encouraging young people to make a positive contribution to their society and to take all the opportunities they receive. Despite reminding me how long it is since my own teenage years, I had a great time! I was enormously impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of both the staff and the volunteers. One of the staff members there is about to retire after 31 years in the role and some of the people she helped as youngsters are now working in the club itself – what fantastic service!
A final word on celebrating our successes, later on this week I will have the job of signing-off a stack of award bids to a national local government award scheme. We are putting in a bumper number of submissions across a range of categories. Celebrating your successes is going to be a key theme for 2011 and this is our starter for ten. We want your innovation to be nationally recognised so keep everything crossed that the judges agree that Staffordshire is the best!