If you go down to the woods today.....

Grey Day....

Well it has been a little longer than I planned but here is my new update.

Over the last two weeks we have been busy looking at the Autumn courses and as part of that process, Lucy and myself have had severla meetings with trainers, new and old. Last week we met with Boots the Chemist, or rather Brian and Andy from Boots (obviously there is no-one called Boots the Chemist). We are looking at trying their tailored Medication Courses, aimed at Care Staff, Dom Care Staff and an advanced one for Nurses and Managers. Keep an eye on the website to see when these dates will occour.

We have also had some very positive feedback on our first Epilepsy course, so a big thumbs up to Madeleine keep up the good work!

On a separate note we had a very informative meeting with Caroline Murphy of Business Link with regards to Train to Gain funding - you can see her contact details and what this involves on the main website here

This week Tina Norman agreed to sit on our steering group, and will bring an extra dimension to our meetings. For those of you who don't know Tina, she is the co-ordinator of Rainbow-ME, an holistic trust set up to offer support for people with M.E., carers, their family and friends throughout Exeter and surrounding areas. You can read more about them here. Tina is also a carer and so brings a whole host of life experience to the steering group.

In June we will be having meetings about possible funding changes which may make more and diverse courses available to thre membership, I will keep you all informaed about any changes as soon as I know.

Well its now a grey day outside, and form the sounds of it, the weekend will not be much of an improvement. On a brighter note, Ireland A will be playing the NZ Maori at Sandy Park next Tuesday evening, so the next update will either be one written in an atmosphere of joy or sadness, the latter being more likely.

Finally, and on a personal note, I have been playing night nurse to the new additions to our family at home - 5 new devon Rex kittens - for those of you interested my wife has posted pictures on her website - you can find them here

Wishing you all a very nice Bank Holiday weekend, hope the pesky caravans avoid you all.....

Eoghan

May Showers

What a rotten day outside! At least I won't need to water the garden.

This week we have helped the Care Ambassadors get the first part of their web site up and running on our pages - keep an eye on them as they develop - www.devoncaretraining.org.uk/careambassador.htm

We have also been collating information about the conference. I also attended the Care Providers Conference in Somerset - which was an interesting day and I made some useful contacts at it.

Finally we trialled a teleconferencing system to allow us to make our meetings more time effective and also much greener - it had a few hiccups but it went well on the whole.

That is all really - another short week has meant not enough time again - more from me next week - and here is Fridays humour section



Have a nice weekend


Eoghan

It makes you think.....

Here is something for the weekend....

Mayday (ish)

Well Friday rolls around once more, the weeks just zip by and I don't seem to have enough time - and next week is a short week!! Grrrr!

I will be posting information about the conference next week and will also leave a set of statistics about how the website is being used, so you can all see how successful it is.

In the meantime, I am curious to know what people think about the idea of a catering course - I don't mean the normal food hygiene courses, but one which is more focussed on the economics of food and the calorific contents etc. Is there a demand for it or not?

Also we are moving the Professional Boundaries Course to September as there was such a low take up rate. This is a course which several people have asked us for and then there seems to be no interest - any suggestions as to why this would be the case?

There will be some news soon about extra courses we may have access to but more of that as it happens.

I have nothing more to tell you all, other than, have a very pleasant weekend - and I will leave you all a more up to date postings next week and the front pages of the website will be updated then too.

Enjoy the May Weekend

Eoghan