Grandmothers, grandmothers and representatives of support agencies met together in London for the first meeting of the BeGrand Advisory Board.
The meeting saw some lively debate – particularly around the need for the service to both promote the fun side of grandparenting and provide support on topics such as contact or kinship share. The group also put forward some useful practical ideas for additional partners and suggested that grandchildren could have a role to play in developing and promoting the site.
The Advisory Board will be meeting every 2-3 months to discuss ideas and put forward suggestions to help inform the development of BeGrand. It would be great to hear your thoughts on points put forward by the group.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Harriet, might you be the first to share with us some of the ideas put forward?
Gerry
Harriet,
Are you able to share with us some of the ideas put forward? The wider membership might also be able to contribute in a constructive way?
Gerry
I am happy to share ideas from the meeting – and it would be great to hear other people's views on these.
We gathered points on 3 main areas in the first meeting:
1. Potential partners and links
The Advisory Board suggested making links with a wide range of groups and organisations, including: legal rights experts, grandchildren, careers organisations, social services, Citizens Advice Bureaux, women's magazines, experts in integenerational issues and PTA.
2. Marketing
The Advisory Board suggested strongly promoting the fact that the site is free. Other ideas included: raising awareness about the service to grandchildren who can then tell their grandparents about it, linking through schools and publicising BeGrand through newsletters of related services
3. Content
Our discussion about content mainly focussed on the use of film. There were mixed views on this, but the overall feeling was that film could be useful as long as it has good content and is kept short. Quality of the film itself was seen as less important than the content.
It would be good to hear if you agree with these points or have anything else to add.
hi as a grandparent carers myself and a avid supporter for grandparents carers rights i have never heard of you untill i was reading todays green paper and i decided to see what you are all about. i run a forum myself offering support to families and friends of drug and alcohol addictions. i also have part of my forum for kinshipcarers. i think everyone should work together to help each other as there are too many very small groups who are struggleing. i attended a lobby last oct to help raise awareness of kinship care and awful thing s that we have to go through just to allow our grandchildren the right of a normal exsistence as there are always contact issues with parents who have no idea of how to put there childrens feelings first. i hope that this will take off and that some work will be done to help grandparent carers to become better at negotiateing contact issues for the safety of there grandchildren. my forum is http://www.whyitsallaboutthem.com