The Heat! The Heat!

Crikey - what a week for heat - and it is going to look like getting hotter! I must try and sell the idea of air conditioning to the Buildings Manager - just so we can keep our suave demeanour here at the DCT office......

This week has been a hectic one as I was off for two days to study. Yesterday we were all at the Skills for Care 'Big Event' Conference at Sandy Park. It was an interesting day and it helped me to put faces to names as well. The theme was 'Creating a Learning Culture' which may sound familiar to a few of you, as that was the topic of our 2005 Conference at Buckfast Abbey - Care 4 U!!

I did get to meet up with Trevor Bevins of Skills for Care who we may end up working closer with to help identify the communications issues which appear to be pervasive in the South Hams. More of this in a later Blog.

I also met Jo Zakrzewski of Tracey House in Bovey Tracey, who has been a most enthusiastic supporter of DCT and the Learning Gallery, so I was able to have a chat about the good and bad points of some courses and it was both informative and a learning experience for me.

We also had some new members, which is a great thing as we are deifinitely getting our message across now. There are hopefully a few more possible members from the day too.

Once again Sandy Park produce a great event - the food was too good as usual - no wonder I cannot lose weight!!!

Big news about Adult Protection Training - this will be available for free from now on. As this can be a nightmare when people book on to free courses and don't turn up, we will have to have a deposit system in place which is forfeit if the person doesn't turn up on the day. This will include Train the Trainer POVA training! So watch this space!!!!

We got the statistics for the website for the month of May and they just keep getting better.
We had 562 unique visitors who had over 12,600 hits between them. This is an increase in visitors of 29% over April 2007 and an increase of 8.2% in the number of hits they have had in the same period. Compared to 2006, there has been an increase of 629% in visitors and 874% in hits from May 2007 to May 2006. This is most encouraging as people are patently using the site but the only thing that is lacking is some regular feedback.

The Care Ambassadors have recruited and trained another 7 Ambassadors and they are going from strength to strength - which is such good news as they have accomplished so much in only 6 months. Once again if you want to have a look at information about them you can look here to get details and contact details too.


Today Lucy and myself met with a COPD Nurse Tutor who will be putting on a training day later this year. This will cover bronchitis, acute asthma and emphasima - it looks like it will be a course that is well worth while and will give a respiratory experts insight into the challenging aspects of this debilitating condition.

Well that seems to be it - the weekend is almost upon us, the beers are being chilled, the forecast is sunny and there is a French Maket in Bovey tomorrow where I shall shop for fine cheeses and wickedly nice bread, so have a great weekend one and all and I will update you again next week.

Regards

Eoghan

ps here is a picture that was sent to us of my two lovely girls up by Haytor, taken by two American tourists 6 months ago and kindly emailed to us this week, Medhbh is on the left and Ailbhe on the right (If you have problems with my name I dare you to try theirs!)