NUCF Minutes Thursday 22nd January 2015

Minutes of NUCF

Date: 22/01/2015

Location: Plummer Court

Attendees: Andy Hackett, Nasir, Christine, Terry, Lee, Steve, Terry, Ryan, Tracey, James, Jill, Davey, Terry, Pam, Mandy Suzanna Prak

Apologises: Chris

Introductions round the table.

Agenda/discussion points:

Update on Client Advisory Groups and Events

Trading Places – Trading Places continues to do really well and operates with no issues. Averaging 35 people and then menu about to broaden to include sausages!

Plummer Court – Good volunteer presence at Plummer Court every Wednesday afternoon to give advice and support to people in the day centre.

Recovery Clinic – Terry and Gary continue to be visible at the Recovery Clinic and Mandy is now there on a Thursday too. Additional NUCF member to start next week on a Tuesday.

Special Guest Suzanna Prak – Recovering Identities through Culture and         Heritage. 

Suzanna talked about building community groups to re-engage people into museums. Potentially there will be different community based events happening in all the museums and galleries every day. 

The programs we talked about were targeted to be used by people in recovery.
The sessions can be diverse e.g. cooking and history or recovery focussed such as a recovery exhibition. 

The sessions would be free and although it would be better to book if possible people can just turn up and participate.

People would be able to see some of the archived museum pieces and potentially handle and study them (we were able to do that on the day with some football memorabilia).

Some additional ideas from the forum were around a recovery exhibition and some creative workshops.

These groups will start in April and there are also opportunities to be part of the overall advisory group for the project. Members were given further details on this from Suzanna. 

Check out the Recovering Identities through Culture and Heritage website for more information.

Training and Development Framework.

Discussion around formulating a training and developmental framework in place for the NUCF.

Aim to look at what training people want courses, financial advice and the idea to look at setting up satellite forums. A workshop around this will be the main agenda point at the next forum.

New Drug and Alcohol Service in Newcastle

The commissioning team made the offer to come back to the NUCF to update us on the next stages of this following the consultation process that the forum were part of. Commissioning team to attend NUCF 5^th March.

Joint User Carer Regional Forum Event

Monday 2 February in the SPACE Building at Newcastle College, Rye Hill Campus, Scotswood Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 7SA. 

There is parking and bus services stop close to the college and it is a 10 minute walk from Newcastle Central Station.

Refreshments will be served from 10.00am with the main event starting at 10.30am and finishing around 2.30pm.  Lunch will be provided.  The event will feature personal stories from service users and carers and news and updates from those involved in recovery and family support across the North East.

AOB

Terry reminded the Forum that Streetwise Opera are at the Recovery Centre every Thursday 1.0-3.00. Check out the Streetwise Opera website for more information.

Next NUCF 05/02/15

Venue Plummer Court