Thank you for visiting the BC CEO Network website!
Our network of agency leaders has a clear set of purposes:
- To facilitate a collective voice
- To promote effective business practices
- To promote leadership development and mutual support
As an organization that is led by CEOs from across the province, we strive to meet our mandate as set out above. While we all make the adjustments required to manage our organizations within the context of COVID-19, the BC CEO Network has continued to support its members in a variety of ways. We have held regional calls, fielded and responded to specific inquiries from members, participated in weekly Covid calls with CLBC, co-hosted multiple Community of Practice calls with CLBC and been a partner with CLBC on Service Provider calls. We continue to provide current information to our members and work closely with government representatives and CLBC to ensure that our needs as a sector are heard, understood and responded to. We have been working closely with CLBC, the PHO and government to find solutions to the many issues that are of current concern to our members including mandatory vaccination, funding for the new National day for Truth and Reconciliation and recruitment and retention. The behind the scenes work is persistent and ongoing and includes a recent meeting with Minister Simons specific to our sector’s concerns about recruitment.
Our Board was reminded last week during its regular meeting about the value of discussions with peers truly is. The agenda item was BC’s Restart Plan and the full re-opening of Community Inclusion supports. The difficulties and challenges agencies are facing with this are myriad and often highly unique to each organization and even each service. The conversation that occurred was not only helpful with respect to the actual work but also as support to each other. We are all looking forward to many more of these conversations that include all members.
In the winter of 2020 the BC CEO Network Board of Directors made the difficult decision to shift to virtual meetings only for 2021. In response to remaining engaged with all our members the Network hosted Leadership Forums on January 27 and April 28 as well as Professional Development Days on January 28 and April 29. Surveys were circulated following each of these sessions and the feedback used to plan for upcoming meetings. Work has been ongoing to plan for the Leadership Forum, Professional Development Day and Annual General Meeting in September 2021. We are pleased to note that this exploration into providing both business meeting opportunities and training sessions has been highly successful with participant numbers that have far exceeded those of our in-person meetings. During Covid we established a meeting planning group that has been actively working behind the scenes not only on meeting content but also reviewing the surveys, completing analysis of IT needs and looking at ways in which the BC CEO Network will continue to meet its members’ needs in a future that will forever have been changed by Covid.
In mid-April we launched our Member Marketing Campaign for Community Living Careers and have shared considerable information to ensure that all of our members are able to take advantage of this social media recruitment opportunity. We will be reviewing the available data for this project in the early fall. We have also been working on the Home Share Training Project and initiated work on a Late Life Planning Guide to supplement our best practice documents. We have continued to actively support our sector at the Social Services Roundtable as well as the Re-Imagining Community Inclusion table and its various sub-working groups. We remain committed to ensuring a positive working relationship with CLBC and held our first Joint Executive Committee meeting with them in over 17 months on July 29.
As of May 25, the province announced its plans for Restart BC; a plan to begin the return to a new normal following the pandemic. This plan is dependent on a continued decline in the number of new Covid cases and hospitalizations together with an increase in the percentage of vaccinated British Columbians. As of August 18, the Covid case numbers continue to increase with additional orders put in place for a portion of the Okanagan. While there has been no announcement that delays the full reopening scheduled for September 7, we will be closely monitoring the situation and will continue to provide the most current available information to our members.
Our Leadership Forum, AGM and Professional Development Day are scheduled for September 28 and 29. We look forward to seeing our members at those meetings.
Member input is vital to ensuring a strong and healthy organization. I encourage your comments, inquiries and recommendations. Please contact me at brenda@bcceonetwork.ca.