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Chairman's Report
Over the years many people in the Highlands have been helped, or helped to help themselves, through the auspices of the Forum. Numbers are not the important point. Some people just need one phone call answered to solve a worrying query; others may need hours of help to sort out a problem involving caring, illness, housing and finance; others need the companionship of a group of people with similar concerns; a car scheme may provide the opportunity to do shopping and to meet friends and so improve the quality of life. Carers, old and young, need respite from caring and the realisation that they are appreciated and their problems understood. It is difficult to describe the full impact of the forum because help and advice is given in many ways, with diverse partners and funding sources. Some staff have been involved in work for the Scottish Executive. As well as projects specific to their area, the local forum facilitators and individual members have been involved in decision-making through membership of Local Health Care Cooperatives (now Community Health Partnerships) and with consultation over specific issues such as after hours provision, occupational therapy and chiropody services. Each group has a database which is used for issues which particularly affect their members, HUG produces publications on specific issues, recently, for example, on out-of-hours services. People First members are growing in confidence and are making their own videos. Help has been given to Highland Visible Voices – a project for the deaf community. The Carers Project is monitoring Carers Assessment. All this places the user and carer in the front line. It is their views which charge the forums’ batteries, aided by a staff with a wide range of knowledge, qualifications and interests. With the Executive Director they are totally committed to their work. The Forum is involved in individual pieces of work funded by various charities and trusts who place their confidence in the organisation. The Lottery ‘Big Fund’ has granted three further years of funding. In a climate of continual change and new regulations we have established closer working relationships with the Highland Council and NHS Highland. It is good that, through membership of the Joint Committee for Community Care, HCCF is seen as a conduit of views which can help shape future services. A three-year service level agreement was welcome and challenging. This year the partners and the Forum are undertaking reviews preparatory to signing a new three-year agreement. The Annual Report gives a full account of the growth in activity. I would like to say a final thank you to the core staff who enable the Board to undertake their duties; to Board members, including those who retired last year, Robin Lingard, Norman Macaskill and Catriona Strivens; to welcome new staff members and thank those who have left us to retire or to face new challenges. I have enjoyed, my 9 years working with HCCF and the organisations with which it collaborates. It has been fun, friendly, intellectually challenging and, in spite of some disappointments, always positive. I am sure that HCCF will continue to respond to changing needs. I trust my final challenge was not to represent an older person’s view of life in the Highlands at the interesting Population Summit organised by the Highland Council. Perhaps I will be asked back when I am older? Isabel
Moore |
Annual
Review 2004 |
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Highland Community Care Forum.
Tel: 01463 718817 — Fax: 01463 718818 — Email: hccf@hccf.org.uk
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It
is with mixed feelings that I introduce this, the twelfth Annual Report
of the Highland Community Care Forum. I will not be standing for election
as a Board member at the AGM. I hope to remain an individual member
of HCCF and of the Skye and Lochalsh Forum and continue to follow the
work of the local forums, HUG and People First. Like many others I first
became involved through one branch of the forum’s work; in my
case as a carer with the Carers Project.