People move in and out of the work as their situation changes, they may have more or less time, have changed jobs or move to retirement. People may also join the Board to add additional or complementary skills and knowledge e.g. with the more recent work on dual validation people with a youth and community background have put themselves forward and become involved.

The Board meets by Skype a few times a year and, when resources permit, it meets face to face, usually once a year. Similarly working groups on specific tasks link by Skype with the occasional meeting.

ESB does not have any paid staff and pays for web hosting and website work and for the administration connected to endorsements on a piece by piece basis. Occasionally the ESB pays for specific pieces of work, e.g. designing the research questionnaire, but generally members freely volunteer their time with expenses being paid where appropriate.

Some people apply to be readers and reporters for the endorsement teams; you can apply by contacting us. These are scrutinised by 2 people from the Board, who are nominated annually. People accepted into the reader and reporters roles are offered initial training and then refresher training as required. These are different as they are paid roles. Whenever a programme is due to be endorsed a call will go out to the pool of trained readers/ reporters and a team selected from those available. Each person will be given a contract with an allocated number of hours for the programme they are endorsing. Readers/ reporters can choose to opt out for a time if their situation changes and then come back in again later, with refresher training if required.

Anyone interested in knowing more about the Board can get in touch with the ESB here and an active current member will be in touch to talk about how they may wish to join in, based on their interests and expertise.