Last week the “Back on Track” project – aimed at the children of alcoholic parents – held an exhibition in the Brighton Fishing Museum.
Learn more about the project here – and more about the museum here.
Back on Track has been a two-and-a-half-year Innovation Fund project with funding from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department of Work and Pensions.
I was privileged to attend the launch event of this fantastic project more than two years ago, alongside a number of people with lived experience, fellow councillors and the mayor.
The project is now in its last six weeks as the funding ends at the end of September.
I am very much looking forward to the report of the project in the autumn, with recommendations based on the learning around providing a whole family response to parental alcohol addiction, perhaps using the material developed in schools and libraries across the city and nationally.
I’ve just returned from a visit to Austria to deal with a family emergency, having worked my way through the bureaucracy around testing and locator forms.
An interesting difference is that every venue required a test or vaccination certificate prior to service, as well as individual registration.
They make it work by having lots of free testing stations offering PCR as well as antigen testing.
While I was away I have looked at my postbag and found, much to my disappointment, that the rubbish and recycling bins are still not being emptied regularly.
I have asked yet again for information about when the situation might improve.
I am also told that, for many residents, renewing or ordering new parking permits remains a big problem, not helped by the lack of good communication.
Your Labour councillors have been pressing council officers to try to get this resolved.
And we are calling for a limited face-to-face customer centre for those who need or prefer to transact their business in that way.
Councillor Carmen Appich is the joint leader of the Labour opposition on Brighton and Hove City Council.
Good to hear Labour councilors are pushing on some ‘face to face customer contact’, not everyone has the internet or can use it, (and lets be honest have you tried phoning a council department). The private sector is up and running, the public sector, 9in parts), appears to be using the pandemic as an excuse to never return to the office – simply not good enough.