Chairs round up! June 2009
What a lot has been happening! I hardly know where to start. We have had a wonderful few months, the place is really buzzing and we are very excited about the future.
But before talking about the future, a word of thanks to Liz Tait for all she has done over the past 3 years as our volunteer co-ordinator. Liz leaves us on June 5th, after being with us for exactly 3 years. We all wish her a long and happy retirement.
We are hoping to appoint an administrative assistant for about 3 months over the summer and have been advertising the post internally. This is to help out in the office, and as an interim whilst we consider our staffing requirements in the light of Liz’s retirement and our future needs.
We have received our DVD, and it is marvellous. It really expresses what we are about so well. I hope you have been able to see it. It is also available to view on our web site, and we have plenty of copies in the office. We want it shown everywhere. Please take a copy and show it to your friends, or consider having a coffee morning or cheese and wine, or whatever you enjoy, and play it to your friends and colleagues. If you know anyone who wants to buy a copy we suggest a donation of about £5, to help cover our costs. But the important thing is to get it shown to as many people as possible. We hope to have several events in the near future with the DVD. We owe Fenwick a really big thank you for all he has done in seeing through this project. And thanks to everyone who has been involved, it really is a credit to you all.
The fund raising group has certainly ‘taken off’ and it is wonderful to see everything that is planned on our web site. We are hoping that we might eventually have support groups in the various towns and villages of our catchment area, organising social events and telling people about our work, and perhaps this is now beginning to evolve. We are always on the look out for volunteers, to organise events, and to work for us. If you have a skill or time , let us know, we will be able to use you!
The name change, to Tynedale Hospice at Home seems to have been well received, with everyone agreeing that the name now reflects what we do. However we are not throwing away our existing cards, stationary, and leaflets, we will have new materials printed with our new name and logo, we will use them till we need to order more, so we are not spending any money unnecessarily. So far the only additional expenditure has been the shop sign, which was done for us at a generous discount, and we all hope that you think it has been worthwhile.
We are considering separating the shop from the service /office provision and we are actively looking at new office premises. There are a number of reasons for this, the shop is overcrowded, working conditions for our shop volunteers are far from ideal, and we believe we could increase takings if we had more selling space. We will of course need many more volunteers to staff a larger shop so if you are interested, please call in and speak to Edna. We need more office space too as the service expands and develops.
One very exciting potential service expansion is a bereavement support service. This is something we have talked about for a long time, but somehow it has never been possible to take that next step and start up the service. Then, completely out of the blue, I received an email from a wonderful lady who wanted to start a bereavement support service in Hexham! Since that day we have had several meetings with Janet Jackson, who is eminently qualified to lead this service, and we have given much thought to what form this service could take. We want to start small and get it right, and our thoughts at present are to offer an initial service to adults who have had contact with the Hospice in some way, and also to offer a support provision for children of any age who have suffered any sort of bereavement ( i.e. this could include sudden deaths such as suicides and road accidents), On 28th May we held the first meeting with potential volunteers, whom we found from within our existing volunteer network. We are planning to start training the first volunteers in the Autumn and hope the service will be in place by the beginning of next year.
Bereaved family members and friends were remembered at our Annual Service at the Abbey on May 16th, and the feedback from this year was that the service was particularly moving. We are considering the form of our celebrations at our Christmas Light up a life and for next Spring and we always welcome feedback for any of our events.
I hope that you are feeling enthusiastic about our service and our future plans. Thank you for all the help and support we have received over the last few exciting months, it helps us to carry on giving our much needed services.
With best wishes
Jane Hastings
Chair of the management committee