Time is an Illusion.Lunch Time doubly so.

Well, it has been quite some time since my last posting. There are many reasons, not the least of which is that I have been so very busy, so I will start with this:

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once - John Archibald Wheeler

And as I could not make everything happen at once, the Blog has taken a back seat!

Well there have been some fairly large changes to what we are doing here at DCT, not the least of which is that we are now offering our courses free of charge to our membership. We will have some provisions and conditions on these, but as you will all have received our emailed flyer update, you will all no doubt know all the details already.

In the 2 months of so since my last update there have been plenty of things I must share with you. I have visited several of our members as well as several prospective and new members. These have been always very enlightening as they help us get a feel for what people are looking for, rather than us presenting a prescriptive list of courses to the membership. I have enjoyed these visits immensely, and they have been made even more enjoyable by the fabulous autumn we have been experiencing.

We have had a huge increase in people attending courses this autumn, and it has given us all a great sense of satisfaction to see how well these courses have been received. They have also helped us examine some possibilities of running these courses again. The NAPPI course had such superb positive feedback it will be a course we will definitely run again.

Our plans for next year are wide ranging, and we will be starting the New Year running with a full programme of courses from January to June. In addition we will be having a Business Conference at Sandy Park in February and the Main Conference,again at Sandy Park, in September.

I will be updating the main webiste with more news and developments, but these include the possibility of DCT sponsoring people to attend conferences elsewhere in the country, and acting as representatives of DCT and then writing a report back for the members to read in the newsletter.

Speaking of the Newsletter, this is going to move to a bi-monthly publication that will have more content in it too. We hope that you will all contribute articles to this as and when you feel like it. It would be great to have contributions that tell us all about achivements, innovations and developments in your organisations. Even if you have something you want to rant about we can publish it - well, as long as its not too extreme!!!!

I will do my best to update you in a more detailed manner next week - so you can have a fuller view of what next years developments will be.

In the meantime, enjoy your weekend, and if you are going out for fireworks have a fun and safe time!

Hurrah!

Well, once every 4 years the Rugby World Cup rolls around and I regress to the mindset of a a 5 year old on Christmas Eve! Here is the Haka, as performed by the All Blacks - it never fails to send a shiver down my spine!

Ringa pakia!
Uma tiraha!
Turi whatia!
Hope whai ake!
Waewae takahia kia kino!

Ka mate, ka mate

Ka ora, ka ora

Ka mate, ka mate

Ka ora, ka ora

Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru
Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā
Ā upane, ka upane
Ā upane, ka upane
Whiti te rā, hī!

This year the cup is theirs to lose, but in the meantime it will be a huge amount of fun and I get to see all of it without having to get up at some unearthly hour like I did at the last one!!

And this is what its all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt3yuuwIVaE

I am so excited............

Blink and you'll miss it.....

OK so I told a small untruth in my last posting, more than a week went past but it did go quickly - but I have made it back to keep you all updated!

It has been a hectic couple of weeks as we are in the middle of an office move as the Annexe is being redesigned into one big happy open plan office - the joys of it all! So we have been packing up our belongings and getting ready to move next week. Don't worry about the new address as this will be short term (we hope) and all post will still get to us. Our numbers and emails will all stay the same.

In addition the Autumn programme has kicked in and Lucy is doing her best juggling impressions to keep all the courses running and full. A couple of courses have been cancelled as there were insufficient numbers, but we will be looking at running courses with reduced numbers in some of the more 'out of the way' places in order to increase accessibility. A full list of the Autumn Programme can be downloaded here.

We will also be offering a range of courses that are currently on offer through Devon County Council. These will have a fairly broad spectrum of titles and will be offered free to the members.

Lynne has just finished the new Newsletter and you can have a look at it here. Once again she has surpassed herself and produced another good read. In the new year we will be planning on a significant in crease in the amount of content in the Newsletter and will be chasing you all for contributions to it - so you have all been warned!

Yesterday we attended a conference in Buckfast Abbey. It was hosted by Skills for Care and its theme was New Types of Worker (or NToW if you like acronyms!). It was a very informative day with some excellent workshops. I attended a workshop on Complementary Therapies in Mental Health which was very good and definitely worth looking at as it is a new way of thinking around therapies and methods of treatment. This was presented by the SUCH Project from Taunton. The other workshop I attended was 'Mirror Mirror' which was a workshop based on drama as a means of looking at and interpreting 'issues' or situations. It was well presented and interesting. The group who presented it are Playback Theatre South West and were very approachable and had some great ideas and takes on things.

Buckfast is such a lovely setting for smaller conferences and meetings and apart from the welcoming staff and fantastic food, you get to see this

What a fabulous setting......

Well that is about it from me for the time being. It's Friday and I am the volunteer (in the sense of not having a choice about it) driver to take my wife and cats to a show in Birmingham tomorrow. So I will miss 4 Rugby Internationals and 2 Football Internationals as I sit in the Car Park also known as the M42! So tonight I will make the most of the first day of the Rugby World Cup - thats me sorted for the next 6 weeks!

Have a great weekend, one and all!

Eoghan and the DCT Team

Empty Head, Empty Thoughts....

I have not forgotton the Blog, I have been alternately living it up in Luxembourg and working hard to catch up - so I will update at length next week - in the meantime, if the rain holds off.....

PS did you all know that the 13th of August was International Left Handers Day?

PPS the 19th of September will be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Its not fake!

I took this picture on Thursday 2nd August at an unnamed restaurant - I thought it was hilarious!

August - not much more to say!

Once more its the end of a week, so I thought I would once more let you know what has been happening.

This week we had our quarterly steering group meeting. This took place at Larkbeare House in Exeter and we had a good turn out for the morning. We welcomed Tina Norman as a new member of the group. Tina wears a multitude of hats and willbe able to represent service users, carers, ME Trust and also brings her knowledge as a tutor/trainer and the wisdom of her time involved in the Expert Patient Programme to us. She has also a very impressive set of contacts in the world of training. Poor Tina had a baptism of fire as she tried to navigate the minefield of acronyms that we use on a daily basis - but in the end I am hoping she enjoyed the meeting (she did not run away screaming 'Never Again' so I am taking that as a good sign!)

At the meeting we decided to take a closer look at a South Hams initiative that we will embark on with Skills for Care - it will be an interesting study to see why there is such a low take up rate from this area for most events , training and otherwise.

We also have decided to go ahead with a mini conference in January and our main one in September/October. More of these two events soon.

There will be major refurbishments of the Annexe at County Hall coming up soon (September time onwards) and so our office will probably be relocating. More of this when we have the details.

So far this year we have had a good time. We have run 23 courses and trained over 200 people - this is twice the level of last year in the first 6 months of 2007. And now we are being used as a first point of reference by the membership - which is great news. The website has received over 65,000 hits in the first 6 months too - which is quite amazing.

I have been working slowly on the Gl0ssary pages trying to make the link system work properly - it is slow but I will gett there eventually.

I also met with the Devonline to discuss the moving of the care Ambassador web pages to their own site - this will be a slow move but should help them to stand on their own soon. The project has received such positive support from Skills for Care and now Plymouth City Council that it seems to be going from strength to strength.

That seems to be about it - so I will wish you all a fine weekend - and update you all again soon.

Friday - and what would that be without....

May You Live in Interesting Times.......

This week I learned something 'interesting'

The number 40 when written in English is the only number that is spelled alphabetically - I read this on the back of a seat on a Ryanair flight as I winged my way home to Dublin for a weekend.

Anyway, I have had two short weeks in a row, coutesy of a long weekend at home and so have had to throw myself into a heap of work when I got back.

This week I finally finished the Acronym list, which may be of help when it comes to checking what some of the more cryptographically written publications land on your desks. It has been a labour, not of love, but maybe pig headedness. Anyway I do hope it is of some help to you. It is accessible through the Glossary page.

Lucy has been very busy ensuring the course sections are kept up to date and that information on each course is accurate. As you can see she has been exceptionally busy as we have quite a sizable schedule in the Autumn. We will be running some courses from Boots (the Chemist) and as these are the first time we will have used them it will be interesting to see what the outcomes are.

We will also be running some courses on Optical Care and Foot Care, possibly in late October, but the dates have yet to be confirmed.

Lynne is working hard on the next Newsletter, and the deadline for the submission of any articles that anyone would like to submit is August 20th. I would encourage you to think about this as it is a great way for you to tell people about new ideas and practices that you have been trying out and also a way of asking questions about any issues or problems that you may be facing. Please email us here to submit anything.

It has been a constant source of surprise for me over the last couple of weeks as we find new people to carry out our training, have sourced new courses and have fulfilled many requests for some non main stream training.

Maybe Ryanair have it right and show that learning can be found in the most surprising of places!

Have a good weekend and I will write more soon

Eoghan and the team

A Great Philosophy!

July? Incredibly it's true!

Well here we are, now in the back half of the year already, and no sign of the fable summer yet. I am beginning to think the whole thing is a rumour put around by the Met Office!

Anyway enough of my endless complaining about the weather.

We are entering the 'summer' hiatus, where things quieten down for us from a training point of view and we have the chance to take stock and make plans for the next phase of events.

Lucy has been working hard catching up on all the course feedback and we will have a dedicated page to that on the main website soon. We feel this is the best way to let people get feedback from the courses and see what other thought of them and they types of people that have attanded certain courses.

I have been meeting with Carol Barkwell with a view to us putting on a small conference at the end of the year. We think we will be calling it 'New Types of Business' and aiming it at the owners of Care businesses with a focus on the new and different ways that you all approach your businesses and looking at new methods that will help you achieve your goals. It will be a chance to share good ideas and to see how other are innovating. I hope that I can put a more detailed posting on here in the next few weeks. If anyone would like to take part of contribute to this or ask more questions please email me here and we can have a chat about it.

We are also looking at the next round of courses and the venues for them. The next Steering Group meeting will be on the 31st of July and the members can have a look at some of the porposed new courses at that point. We will be welcoming a few new members to the group, Alsion Lear from the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital will be an NHS representative and Tina Norman will be representing the Rainbow Trust as well as her own perspective as a service user and carer. They will bring some valuable knowledge and life experiences to DCT and will help us keep a broad view on our targets and goals.

There is not much else to tell really - so I will wish you a good weekend and update you again next week

Regards

Eoghan

A Small Smile

The smooth talker....

Rain Rain Go Away.....

Did I miss Summer? I feel like I have just performed a Rip van Winkle! Last week I was basking in the heat of glorious June sun and worrying if I had enough sun cream to last the weekend, and now I am cursing because I left the umbrella in the car! Here is the view from our office this afternoon!

Anyway, to more important things. What we have been doing.

This week we have had an interesting Business Planning meeting, exploring the possible future sources of funding for the Independent sector. There will be many new things that will come out of this, but the first one I can tell you about is that from July 1st all Vulnerable Adults Training will have no charge. This covers all aspects of it, including the POVA Train the Trainer courses. Based on our previous experiences of what happens when courses are free we will be requiring all attendees to send a cheque for £20.00 and if they attend the cheque will be returned. If not then it will be cashed. We feel this is the best way to deal with this.

We are hoping that this move towards free training may be extended to other courses - so all I can say is 'watch this space' we will continue to fight the Independent sectors corner on these issues.

There was also a Team Meeting for us at DCT and the wider Learning & Development team which took up most of Tuesday and we learned more about forthcoming changes to our team structure. As these are nowhere near finalised I will not bore you with the details.

The rest of this week has been taken up with number crunching to see where we stand relative to the whole of Devon, regarding the numbers of staff working in Social Care and any obvious gaps or needs in learning that may exist. I have unearthed some interesting figures and will be posting them on here once I have confirmed their accuracy.

Finally we are still wrapping up feedback from the conference and will post that information as soon as we have it prepared.

In the meantime, adieu and have a bon weekend!

Eoghan