It’s been another busy week and on Thursday I attended a lunch at the Fairfield Centre to mark the 75th anniversary of the Windrush arrival. HMT Empire Windrush was one of the first ships to carry West Indian migrants to Great Britain during the post-war period to help rebuild the country. A room full of Fairfield Centre members were treated to a really tasty Caribbean lunch and live Steel Pan Drum music, many getting up and dancing. As ever, the event at the centre was full of fun and laughter as well as reflection and discussion about the history of Windrush and the shocking events that began to surface in 2017 of ill-treatment of some of those who travelled to make new lives here.
Speaking of emotional and humbling events, the Council is planning a celebration to mark Ukrainian Constitution Day. The Homes for Ukraine team are working with some incredibly talented Ukrainian guests living in Mole Valley to provide a free event at Dorking Halls on Saturday 8th July to celebrate the history and culture of their Country. A concert pianist and choir will be joined by others to provide an afternoon of Ukrainian music and poetry. There will also be a documentary by another one of our guests, who is an award winning film producer, depicting the unbelievably difficult decision and subsequent journey of one family to leave behind their beloved Mariupol at the beginning of the invasion and travel to the UK to live with their host. More information will be posted on Molly if people are interested in coming along.
My thoughts this week have also been around a refresh and reminder of our responsibilities around safeguarding. If, in the course of your duties, you have any concerns or anyone raises concerns with you that a child or vulnerable adult may be at risk, we have a legal duty to consider whether we should report that to the Childrens or Adults Safeguarding Hubs. Sometimes it could be that we need to report to the police if we have concerns – this week I had some reports of potential modern day slavery and I acted by passing that information on to the police for them to look at it. If you have any concerns and are not sure what to do, the first thing you can do is speak to one of the Safeguarding leads at the Council – they are Kirsty Jones, Stuart Cole and myself. Please do speak to us, the worst thing you can do is do nothing.
I will be doing some more awareness raising of our safeguarding responsibilities in the next month or so via a number of means so do keep an eye on Molly or speak to me in the meantime.
I was off on Friday, went to Bournemouth for the day – not to take in the lovely sea air and sunshine, but to sit inside a sweaty auditorium while my daughter competed in an international Cheerleading competition – with not a pom-pom in sight! They did really well and Hit Zero!!
I hope everyone had a good weekend too.
That’s all folks.