June 2010

This week is National Men's Health Week and there is a great deal of activity going on across the UK that seeks to make a positive impact in this field. A couple of things I particularly like are the Men's 10k on Father's Day in Glasgow, organised by Sarah at Men's Health Forum Scotland, and the Fatherhood Institute's storytelling initiative aimed at getting dads involved in primary school education.

I have just returned from a very interesting week's course on coaching, as I am missing that part of the work of managing people now that I am self employed. Although I manage people in my role of Chair of Voluntary Health Scotland and Men's Health Forum Scotland, I really loved helping lots of people develop their skills when I was leading large teams. So now I am going to get myself skilled up properly to do some coaching work. It sits quite neatly between the counselling work and the training delivery that I do.

There were some lovely people on the course which was great in terms of getting stuck in to some proper skills development and revision work. So thanks to them. It was run by the Centre for Coaching based in London.

In other news, Jim and I will be putting our Masculinity and Health Service Provision course on in December. Nick Laird and I will be running a course on September 1st looking at demonstrating dignity and respect when working with transgender people: email me for further info on this if you are interested - there's a flyer about it here. And the EMR Events course is running on September 2nd. We will be running the Public Speaking and the Management Skills training courses at some point too.

An employee of Health Scotland won the £50 M&S vouchers offered as a prize for completing the survey mentioned in April's news.

April 2010

Well spring is finally here and I have been busy with various things. First of all I am running a couple of surveys at the moment. The first, which can be found here looks at the use of pornography and its impact on public sector workers. The reason for doing this is that although much work has gone on over the years it has always been at quite a surface level. So working with Linda Thompson from the Women's Support Project I thought I'd like to start some work looking at why men might pay to use porn when real relationships are free. So this is the start of that. It will probably morph into training work at some point down the line as there is a good basic course run by fpa, but after that you're on your own if you work with the public in any sort of support role. This can be a particularly difficult issue in residential settings.

The second survey is to gather some information on training needs and where those considering training look for courses. It is here, will only take a few minutes, and if you leave your email address gives you the chance of winning £50 of M&S vouchers.

The courses I run with EMR Events are scheduled for June. For more information or to book have a look at the EMR site here. I am still delivering training for Employee Counselling Service, information on which can be found at the training section of their site here. In development is some training work on issues faced by transgender people, and how those working facing the public - actually how anyone who works - can help reduce the negative impact of such issues.

February 2010

The news at the moment is that I have updated the website to this new shiny version, and I hope you like it. Especially the pictures which are some favourites of mine.

More importantly though I am looking forward to delivering various courses in March with EMR Events, one on public speaking, one on skills for new managers (or old ones who want to have a day out of the office), and one on running events. You can find details and booking forms for them all at the EMR Events site here.

I am also doing some work around the demand for pornography and the possible effects it has on behaviours that men display around sexual activity. This will be a work in progress but I will soon have a small questionnaire out and about to start gathering information.

Men's Health Forum Scotland is about to lose its excellent leader of the last five years, Mark Ward, who is moving on, and so the next few months will involve trying to find a replacement through the recruitment and selection process. Hopefully there will be someone out there who is suitably qualified for the role and can run with it in a new and positive way. Mark will be a hard act to follow but the staff team are great so there is a solid foundation in place for whoever takes the post.