Annual Report 2008-2009
HISTORY
1Voice was established in 1999 and held its first family event in December 2000. Since then it has developed its scope to run two family events per year, Role Model and Teenage workshops, a website, email group and a twice yearly newsletter.
MISSION STATEMENT
1Voice creates opportunities to bring together children and young people who use Augmentative Alternative Communication and their families to share ideas, information, skills and personal experiences. 1Voice provides a range of services and support activities.
OBJECTIVES
1. To preserve and protect the health and to advance the education and development of children and adults who have communication difficulties. Particularly by assisting or encouraging persons using Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) within the United Kingdom to achieve their communication potential, and to make provisions or promote any scheme thought necessary to meet this aim.
2. To advance the education of the public, to increase their awareness and understanding of AAC.
CHAIR’S REPORT
Membership
We now have a membership of over 180 families, role models, professionals and supporters. As each family counts as one member, this means that we reach and support approximately 460 people. Our mailing list includes schools, Communication Aid Centres, Speech and Language Therapists, Social Service Departments and voluntary organisations.
1Voice Teenage Project- “Lost In Transition”
at Hothorpe Hall, Leicestershire
Twelve teenagers attended this year’s successful Teenage Project.
Our Teenage Project this year tackled the topic of Transition. Young people took part in workshops to discuss their transitions and to describe how their strengths and resources will help them through the next steps towards their futures. They were also able to talk about their hopes and dreams for the future.
Parents attended a workshop on Person-Centred Planning run by Liz Wilson from Calderdale Parent Council.
See write-up here
Blackpool 2008
Families benefitted from being able to spend time with other families as well as getting to know our team of Role Models. Young AAC users were able to increase their motivation and communication skills by having the opportunity to chat and be listened to by those attending. Siblings and volunteer children were able to have fun and participate in our inclusive activities alongside their disabled peers. And last but not least the volunteers were able to develop their skills and competencies in AAC by listening to and spending time with families.
We are excited that we are going to widen the age range of the winter weekends in the future to any child up to the age of 12 who has started to use an alternative communication system.
Website and Newsletter
The website has been overhauled to make it easier to navigate and more accessible for people using screen readers. Copies of our movies have been uploaded, and there are just a few of the “old originals” to add.
Autumn and Spring editions of the newsletter have been distributed.
Future newsletters will be distributed electronically to those who are able to receive it in this medium. This will reduce our printing and postage costs as well as making it more accessible (via screenreaders and with people being able to choose their preferred size). Back issues of the newsletter are also stored on our website for easy access.
Publicity and Networking
We are delighted that we have continued to sell copies of our “Listen to Me DVD” throughout the year far and wide and that it has been used in training and workshops as well as delivered at conferences all over the world.
We have participated and given our views which have gone toward the Bercow Review supported by the Communication Consortium, Communication Matters, 1Voice Communicating Together & ACE Centre North.
We are pleased to have continued to link closely with Communication Matters and once again thank them for their support. We had a successful and busy stand at the Communication Matters Conference 2008.
We have networked with the Communication Trust and have a seat at their regular London meetings. Special thanks go to our dedicated member Jenny Herd for raising our profile and for continuing to give parents and young people’s views at national strategic level. More details of her work are included in the next section.
Two parents and young people attended the Unique conference in Daventry. Unique is a charity that supports people with rare genetic conditions, and people travel from all over the world to attend their biannual conference. Our thanks to Rebecca Marriot and Natasha Bello and their parents, who represented 1Voice to talk about their experience of using communication aids.
Funding/Strategy for Communication Aids
Jenny Herd has been representing 1Voice at Scope’s “No Voice No Choice” campaign and on the Communication Consortium. Her full report will be available in the next newsletter, and the summary of involvement is as follows:
The Scope campaign steering group includes 1 Voice, Communication Matters, ACE North and a number of older AAC users. It is an active campaign which ensures that issues directly affecting 1 Voice members are represented at a national and strategic campaign level. There is still a long way to go, but at least some of the many issues which affect AAC users and their families on a daily basis are now actually being discussed at the highest level. And even more hopefully, an adult AAC user campaign has just been launched – in many ways on the back of the relative success of the Scope NVNC campaign and the results of the 0-19 Bercow review.
The Communication Consortium is the advisory group to the Communication Trust. The Communication Trust has been established (initially at least) to advise on workforce development across the whole range of children’s Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN). AAC in its widest sense is well represented and there is a definite recognition that it is actually a very important aspect of communication for very many children with SLCN.
By being involved, 1 Voice is again ensuring that the actual day to day issues faced by families with children who use AAC are being represented at a nationally strategic level – and it is often the little (but actually very significant) things that can get overlooked if actual “sharp end” service users are not involved.
I feel very hopeful that we really are seeing some “green shoots” (sorry to use that old credit crunch cliché!) in terms of national and governmental recognition that SLCN is the lynch pin of children’s development - socially, emotionally and educationally, and that the legislation and resources necessary to tackle this are becoming a little more forthcoming.
Volunteers
Our volunteer co-ordinator this year has been James Leigh and we thank him for his work in this. We are so very grateful to all our volunteers who are skilled and enthusiastic and whose time and energy make our events possible. This year we have been delighted to have some of our long time volunteers’ children now helping out as volunteers in their own right, as well as the next-group of volunteers.
Role Models
This year we are delighted that Katie Caryer has taken on the role of co-ordinating our team of Role Models. As well as running workshops Katie has taken a major part in the organising of the Teenage Weekend.
Trustees
The Committee Consists of Katie Clarke (Chair), Toby Hewson (Treasurer), Tamsin Crothers (Secretary), Ann Morris (Fundraising), Kate Caryer (Role Model Co-ordinator and 1Voice Southeast), James Leigh (Volunteer Co-ordinator), Terry Gibson (Multimedia and admin), and Faith Douthwaite (1Voice West Yorks). Co-opted trustees are Jane Handley (events worker)and Lisa Clements (1Voice Southwest).
The Trustees meet every two months either through phone conferencing or face-face. We also have sub-groups to plan events and to organise the business side of the organisation. As Trustees live in various parts of the country we communicate regularly via e-mail to carry out the smooth everyday running of 1Voice. The Trustees are sincerely thanked for their time, dedication, skills and commitment that they put in ensuring the sustainability and growth of the charity.
Development Feedback
We are delighted to have made significant progress on writing up our Strategic Business Plan over the last year. Toby Hewson, Katie Clarke and Tamsin Crothers have spent a great deal of time and energy in shaping up the plan which has involved several meetings and many phone calls and e-mails late into the night. Special thanks to Tamsin.
We are looking forward to signing off the Business Plan at our AGM in 2009 and working together to move things forward over the next year and to at last start employing staff to take on many of the roles we have done voluntarily over the last 9 years.
1Voice Branches
We are excited to announce that 1Voice will continue to exist, with smaller, regional branches being developed.
How will this work?
Regional branches will be formed, who will run events chosen and organised by members. These could be informal get-togethers, day events, activities or residential events, as appropriate for the people in that area.
Each local branch will be responsible for its own fundraising.
Each regional branch will form its own committee and hold its own AGM.
Each branch will feedback to the Executive Committee on a regular basis.
The regional branches will commit to following an outlined 1Voice ethos and policies, and will be given guidelines (and any necessary support) about running events etc
Local branches will feed into the website and newsletter so that all 1Voice members know what is happening around the country.
1Voice (National) will continue to hold a single event combined with its AGM for all members.
People will join 1Voice (National) and then be put in touch with their local branch so they would continue to benefit from national and local resources.
What are the Benefits?
The existing committee do not have the capacity to provide the number of events people are asking for. Smaller amounts of work will be shared between more groups of people, so there should be less for everyone to do, yet more services provided!
1Voice (National) can act as a central resource, sending training information etc to all branches.
The group of people using communication aids is already small. In this way, we can still maintain contact between all members, while offering more events locally.
All members keep up to date with what other 1Voicers are doing around the country via the newsletter and website, and everyone contributes to this.
We won’t need a waiting list for events any more.
More people can get involved in 1Voice because of the reduced distances people will need to travel. Day-events (and even smaller events, such as a trip into town, bowling etc) will be possible. 1Voice will be more accessible to families it has been hard to reach in the past.
We still have an umbrella organisation to support minority groups that may emerge and who maybe want to get in contact with others across the country, such as children in mainstream, children using eye-gaze.
As branches will sign up to guidelines and policy, levels of service/security etc will be equal (or improved!)
Local branches will be affiliated to 1Voice (National) so they won’t each have to register to become a charity in their own right.
1Voice Southeast & 1Voice Southwest
Over the last year we are delighted that 1Voice Southeast has held two very successful events and that 1Voice Southwest held their first event. 1Voice West Yorkshire first event to be held in May 2009.
Congratulations to our first three branches for their hard work and their commitment to developing AAC and family support in their regions. We look forward to other areas coming on board and learning from the good practice that is starting to take shape from our first three branches. This is an extremely exciting development for 1Voice.
BIG THANKS...........
To all who put time and effort into supporting us over the last year, to all our wonderful young people and their families, out fantastic volunteers and role models, our fundraising team, and of course the committee who continue to drive the organisation forward with energy and enthusiasm.