Examination of Witnesses (Questions 327
- 339)
WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE 2004
MRS DENISE
MURPHY AND
MRS MORAG
ANTROBUS
Q327 Chairman: Ladies, thank you
very much for coming. We really look forward to what you are going
to say. Could you give us some brief biographical details?
Mrs Murphy: I am Head of Services
Welfare within WRVS. I have worked for the organisation for nearly
four years. Prior to that, I had a career in human resources.
Mrs Antrobus: I am Senior Operations
Manager with WRVS Services Welfare. I have been with them since
December 1998. Prior to that I was a lecturer in further education.
Chairman: Mrs Antrobus, we do admire
the work that the WRVS has been doing over the years.
Q328 Mr Blunt: Is there such a person
as a typical services welfare officer?
Mrs Murphy: Certainly since I
have been with the organisation, when we select an individual—and
that is myself, Morag Antrobus and some of the other managers—we
look for someone who has a background perhaps as a matron at a
school or in the nursing profession, the more caring professions.
I would say that typically they would be caring people, capable
of listening rather than doing all the talking and with a big
heart, really.
Q329 Mr Blunt: Are they all drawn
from the Women's Royal Voluntary Service?
Mrs Murphy: No, they are not volunteers.
The AT services welfare officers that work for Services Welfare
are in fact paid employees. We recruit via publications like The
Lady magazine.
Q330 Mr Blunt: Are there any men?
Mrs Murphy: There is one.
Q331 Mr Blunt: Is there an age requirement?
Mrs Murphy: No. In the adverts
we ask for a mature attitude to life but I do not suppose we would
employ someone at 64 and a half, for example, because of the retirement
age.
Q332 Mr Blunt: Do you know how young
the youngest is?
Mrs Murphy: The average age of
the 80 people we employ is 51 and the ages range from about 27
to someone who is due to retire in a couple of months at 64 plus.
Q333 Mr Blunt: Do they come from
any particular social background? You said they have mainly worked
in a caring capacity. Is there any social background or career
background that would be typical?
Mrs Murphy: That is nursing and
education, and clearly on the CVs I look for individuals who have
worked with young people and who have tried to understand some
of the issues that young people have.
Mrs Antrobus: May I add that quite
a few of them in fact actually have some sort of knowledge of
the military—they might have been a spouse of someone in
the military—for various reasons, and so they come to us,
not all of them but a percentage, with that knowledge.
Q334 Mr Cran: Still on the subject
of your service welfare officers, are they trained? You advertise
for them. You get the right individual. You have explained what
sort of individual it is you are after. What do you do with them
then? Do you train them in the job that you expect them to do
or not?
Mrs Murphy: It starts off with
induction training. That induction training is over about three
days. We go through the entire terms and conditions, through what
they are expected to do and case studies. In fact when we select
them we actually put a scenario together regarding a particular
issue that they may be confronted with when they go into the units.
That is obviously to assess how they would deal with it. After
their initial induction, we are very well supported by Colonel
ATRA who actually attends and goes through issues that he wants
to put forward.
Q335 Mr Cran: Is he a serving officer?
Mrs Murphy: Yes. Colonel Villalard
at HQ Land takes part in that induction as well. After that, the
services welfare officer is then placed in a unit with a mentor,
with another services welfare officer who is more experienced,
and so there is a lot on-the-job training.
Q336 Mr Cran: How long does that
mentor stay with the person?
Mrs Murphy: At least six months,
but we like them to stay at their first training unit for 12 months.
Ideally, that is what we would like them to do, but again because
of pressures of people leaving—and thankfully the turnover
of service welfare officers is not high—and because of the
age profile I inherited when I joined the organisation, and there
is quite an older work force, we have brought in young people
to look at succession planning.
Q337 Mr Cran: How often do you retrain
these officers? You give them the induction training; they have
six months with a mentor. Would you retrain them after that?
Mrs Murphy: We are currently looking
at the training ourselves. There are many courses within the Army
that they can actually dovetail into and that is always available
to them. We look at the listening skills training and that is
something that we are currently doing.
Mrs Antrobus: They start off initially
in one of the training regiments, which is clearly quite different
to working in the Field Army. What we like to try and do, we cannot
always achieve it for logistical purposes, is to put the services
welfare officer through Phase 1, then into Phase 2 and then out
into the Field Army, so that the training, just by virtue of the
job changing, because it changes from unit to unit and Phase 1
to Phase 2 and on to the Field Army, is ongoing. The more specialist
training is something that we do try and dovetail with the Army
because theirs is very good. At the moment there are a lot of
courses on combating stress and because we are with the Field
Army, we do have to get involved in that as well. They are very
supportive about putting us through that training with their own
staff.
Q338 Mr Cran: How do you measure
the performance? You get them in position, but your organisation
is not like perhaps many others where, if you have a Marks &
Sparks type organisation, you have a manager and supervisors who
can assess your performance. This job is a bit different, is it
not? How do you measure performance?
Mrs Murphy: What I have tried
to do since I have joined is add a bit more structure to what
we have got within Services Welfare and we have introduced appraisals
and we have introduced probationary period assessments as well.
The way the structure is worked out is that we have myself, Morag
and then we have four managers who look after a particular location—there
is a copy of our structure in the report. Those managers are tasked
with visiting a club x number of times throughout the period we
discuss, so they have constant dialogues with their managers.
We also annually write to the commanding officers and ask them
to complete a questionnaire basically about the service we provide,
how could we do it differently, and then about the particular
services welfare officer and how they are performing and what
could we change there, and any training they think is lacking
in that area, because those commanding officers and the unit welfare
officers are working closely with those people every day.
Q339 Mr Cran: What sort of on-going
support do your welfare officers get from the centre of your organisation
on an on-going basis? Do they get any, or are they working fairly
solitary existences from everyone else in the camp?
Mrs Murphy: It can be solitary,
and that is one of the qualities, if that is the right word, when
we choose someone. They have to be fairly robust people to live
in an isolated part of the country. The support we give them is
in the form of their manager who is on basically 24 hour call
for them if necessary. Although the services welfare officers
do not work 24 hours, there are times when they are called upon
and they may need someone else to contact to give them some support
there. We get feed-back currently from a series of information
days whereby we go out to all the locations and tell them about
the bigger part of the organisation and tell them how we are performing
within Services Welfare. We have one more to do in Lichfield and
then we have completed that. Through that exercise we will have
had face-to-face contact with the 80 welfare officers.
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