Thank you very much for being a group leader. You are at the very heart of what u3a offers.

Enjoy your role! And please remember that although you are leading the group you are not there as a mere instructor to a passive audience, even if you are a world authority in your group field. The atmosphere you create will be that of friends as equals who greatly enjoy each other's company, knowledge and experience.

Your task as leader is not meant to be arduous or a chore, but you need to manage one or two administrative details.

General administration

• Please ensure that all members of your group are paid-up members of Chipping Norton u3a (see the Membership page). This is essential, and most importantly means that your members are covered by the u3a's Third Party Liability Insurance.
• Keep a record of your group membership. Contact the Groups Coordinator whenever something changes - for example, if you lose members, as other people may be waiting to join. Also, remember to contact the Website Administrator whenever the website information needs changing - say, you were full but now have spaces, or vice versa, or you have changed the time or venue of your meetings.
• Retain your members' contact details, so that you can keep them informed of meetings, news and changes of plan. Make sure these details also include suitable emergency contact information.
• Please make regular visits to your entry on the Groups page. Does it show the wrong leader, time or venue, or that you are full when you actually have spaces?
• It helps our public presence greatly if your group is represented at our annual Open Day. Most groups organise a rota of their available members to take it in turns at the group table, even if only for an hour at a time.

Staying safe

With luck nothing will ever go wrong during group meetings, but occasionally problems arise - most obviously during sports and outdoor activities, but of course mishaps can occur even in a member's home, such as a person slipping and falling.

As always, anticipation and prevention are the best safeguards. Below you'll find links to u3a documents that cover risk assessment, both in general terms and more specifically for different types of group actitivy and venues. However, if things do go wrong there is also an Incident Reporting Form too. (On this site we use the national u3a template for this form.)

• In the event of any mishap or accident during a group meeting, however trivial it may seem, please immediately inform the Groups Coordinator and the Secretary and complete the relevant sections of the Incident Reporting form. This includes meetings in members' homes, where the informal setting may make this appear to be unnecessary.

Guidelines for assessment and prevention

Here are the national u3a's Risk Assessment FAQs (PDF). There are many more guidance documents on the National u3a website - too many to list here. Too see them, Group leaders should visit https://www.u3a.org.uk/members-area/support/advice-and-guidance, and scroll down to the heading Risk Assessments for the twelve documents listed there, covering everything from walks, sports and holidays to risks in the home itself.

To repeat, when things go wrong: download and complete the Incident Reporting form

Note: the Incident form is a Word document. Please contact the Web Administrator if you need this document to be in a different format.) Fill in those sections that apply to your incident, then email the form to the Secretary.

Just to reiterate, because it's important: please keep your group details up to date! Inevitably, people come and go, and leaders, venues and timings change too, but we have no way of knowing this if you don't tell us. Please inform the Groups Coordinator and the Website Administrator of all changes as soon as possible.