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.
