A Sad Update and how we will fix it.

Hello everyone,

Shane and me were going to tell you all about the very good work we have done in West Norfolk because we have been working very hard and doing a good job helping lots of other people. But we got an email from the Clinical Commissioning Group telling us that they are not going to support us any more after our grant runs out in September.

We are all upset because we do lots of work supporting people in West Norfolk and it looks like the Clinical Commissioning Group are only interested in funding stuff in Norwich and we all in West Norfolk can all get stuffed. Because it doesn’t matter how hard we work or how good we are with managing our money or how many people in West Norfolk will have no one to help them and we all know that the handicapped like us are always at the bottom because those in power and holding the purse strings don’t care unless you have a personal budget.

This has all happened to us before in 2003 when people tried to close our group down and they failed that time and they are going to fail again. Last August the Clinical Commissioning Group forced us to become a registered charity and we take this very seriously and we have done lots of training about our responsibilities so this is what is going to happen.

We are going to have to make David, our worker, redundant at the end of July but we have talked to him about this and he will stay on as our adviser doing voluntary work. He did this for us for 7 months in 2003 and he says he will do it again to make sure we have some support. We will go on holding a weekly meeting every Friday in Kings Lynn and the other groups will carry on as normal while we talk about what else we can do. Keep watching our blog and we will write again.

Shane Malster, Chair and Paul Norman, Treasurer

Come to Hunstanton

West Norfolk Self Advocacy Project has been working hard to start a new group and we are now ready to invite everyone to come.

We have had members in Hunstanton since the beginning of the group, one of the members who lives there started SAP

We need to work out what will be the best time and day to meet so the first open coffee morning will be on Wednesday 15^th July at 12.30 in the basement of the Hunstanton Town Hall.

Each session will be £2.00 to cover the cost of the tea and coffee and pay a bit towards hall hire.

We hope to see as many people from the Hunstanton area as possible.

Come along if you live or work in Hunstanton and you can help make the new group.

Simon and Paul

Discussing Hunstanton Group

Rose and Paul discuss the new Hunstanton Group

A Remarkable Journey

The other members of the West Norfolk Self Advocacy Project and I have been on a remarkable journey the last two months.

In July we were told by our major funder, the Norfolk Clinical Commissioning group, that we had to become a registered charity in order to ensure that their trustees did not suffer if we here at WNSAP made any wrong decisions and that our being a registered charity would protect them.

We were told that we would have to adopt a different constitution to the one we have been using since we formally set up in 2003 and that it might be 'better' if we have some able bodied people on our committee. These two suggestions were non starters firstly we have been using our constitution since September 2003 and it has worked very well for us.

The second issue was of the utmost importance to all of us here at West Norfolk Self Advocacy Project. We are a TRUE user led and managed organisation. Under our existing constitution only people with learning disabilities and/or mental health issues can vote, can be members of the Management Committee and can sign cheques. Years ago we had tried s mixed management committee but it did not work as those who are able bodied gradually took over control until we stopped them.

We spent a lot of time being very angry about all this until David, our Coordinator said STOP and lets look at this differently!. So we spent many hours thinking and working out what exactly we wanted. We contacted the Charity Commission and asked for their views on our current constitution. They thought it was very good although a bit wordy in places and suggested shortening our aims bit. As their suggestion said exactly what our old aims said but using fewer words we agreed with this. At the same time one of the people who help us fund raise said it would open more opportunities if we were a registered charity.

We had a special meeting and everyone talked about becoming a registered charity and everyone at the meeting voted yes to registering. We talked again to the Charity Commission and on the (insert date) we got our registered charity number – so HURRAH for us, as West Norfolk Self Advocacy Project is still owned and managed by those with learning disabilities and/or mental health issues and HURAH for us doing it ourselves

So Much work and such exciting times :)

Hello,

We have not writen a blog post since last year!!!

There has been so much going on and so many changes that we lost track of time so we are so sorry if you missed us.

There will be more things coming as each of us tells you about the things we have done.

See you all soon.

Shane