This blog has been inspired by us attending an event in Birmingham this month where we were required to do a Pecha Kucha style presentation on “Our Last Year”.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pecha Kucha you can visit http://www.pechakucha.org/ to find out more, but basically we had to present 20 pictures and talk for 20 seconds on each slide. A mean feat for those of you who know myself or Fiona and our ability to talk!

I won’t bore you with copies of all of the slides we used, but having sat down and put it all together we surprised ourselves at how much we had achieved in our first year as a CIC (Community Interest Company)

1. Our first achievement was successfully registering and being accepted as a CIC. We all believed passionately about wanting to offer services with people at the centre of the service and to give back to the community in some way.
2. Our next challenge was recruiting the right staff to fulfil our vision. We have been very lucky in the staff we have on board who all share the company ethos and values and are committed to providing the best service possible.
3. We discovered along the way services which worked and services which didn’t and so made decisions to stop providing some services but build on and expand on more successful ones. Our Therapeutic Arts and Pet Therapy are prime examples of built upon services.
4. Helping customers achieve their goals to independence and making a difference to them was our fourth aim and achievement
5. We decided to support the Trussell Trust and Foodbank as we all felt passionately that in 2015 in the civilised United Kingdom to have people relying on Foodbank was appalling. We made monthly food donations to Foodbanks across Coventry and Warwickshire including additional targeted donations in August of school uniforms, November of Advent Calendars and December of Christmas items such as crackers, toys, trees and decorations, cakes, mince pies, selection boxes, chocolates etc
6. We made a donation to Coventry Comfort Carers Homeless Charity- an organisation helping people living on the streets in Coventry
7. We made donations to “Helping Hands” helping the Homeless in Leamington and Warwick including furniture
8. We spent October finding innovative pink ways of raising awareness and funds for the University Hospital in Coventry’s Breast Cancer Unit. We raised £579.80 and had lots of Pink Fun along the way.
9. We made a lot of effort to link with the right organisations to work alongside and to provide the right services to people. We believe we achieved well and will strive to continue this in 2016
10. Our staff team increased from 3 at the beginning to 17 by the end of the year. We believe we have an excellent staff team and cannot thank them enough for their hard work and commitment
11. Our Pet Therapy Team has grown as has the demand and popularity of the service. We welcomed new dogs and Boo the miniature American Horse to the team
12. Our Therapeutic Arts Department have done some incredible work and reached many people in residential care environments as well as their own home. Some of their work can be seen on our webpage or facebook or twitter.
13. I guess our biggest achievement was being able to open a Dementia Café for the people of Coventry. We were lucky enough to team up with publicans Martin and John of the Minstrel Boy in Allesley Park who shared our passion about supporting people with Dementia. Appoint Us staff the café and provide the activities and although only month 2 at the end of the year it has been great fun and a great success. We had a Singing Disney Princess in December and the smiles it brought to people’s faces was worth it all. (For more information see our webpage https://www.appointusservices.co.uk/dementia-cafe/
14. We appointed a fourth Director – Felicity Banbury. Felicity shares our passion for supporting people and has been on board with the organisation since it started. We welcome her to the Directors team and to the diversity and knowledge she can bring to us.
15. It hasn’t all been positive. We have made mistakes along the way, but we see them as stepping stones to learning!

 

The day in Birmingham was great. Met some lovely people and learned some bread making skills from a lovely man called Albert.

 

If you are an organisation that would like to work with us, please contact us.

 

Here’s to a  Happy and Peaceful Fesrtive Seadon and to a positive 2016 for us all