The weatherman keeps saying that snow is on the way so it must be nearly Christmas – will it really be a white one this year?
Christmas means, amongst the more traditional things, that I have been doing my “new” job as CEO for virtually a whole year so it's a good time to reflect on what progress we have made and what we should be doing next.
Firstly let me say that I have greatly enjoyed the last year – I have met lots of great people and learnt a huge amount, including how much more there is to do and to learn!
At the beginning of the year I set out six key objectives, all of which are designed to enable us to have the biggest possible positive impact on the lives of people with sight loss:
- Sustain existing services
- Improve existing services
- Develop new services
- Improve our information and communications
- Continue and build on our research
- Provide low cost high quality back office support
So how are we doing?
Well, without wanting to pre-empt our next Impact Report which will be coming out in Summer 2012, here is my personal view of our end of term report!
- All of our services are still going strong in spite of local authority funding cuts - but there is more work to do to further improve the efficiency of some of our services to secure future funding.
- We have started to improve how well we communicate what our services are (and are not) to reduce misunderstandings – but there is a lot more work to do on this as a priority for 2012.
- We have started up the community hub in Birmingham and the Lottery-backed home visiting service in Stourbridge and developed relationships with a number of local sight loss societies.
- We have established an official Information and Communication team, produced our first Impact Report and overhauled the website – with another refresh on the way.
- We have reviewed our research activity, appointed a new Director from within our ranks and agreed a new focus on communicating findings through to the front line service teams and users.
- We have achieved our aim of reducing back office costs to half the level of two years ago as a percentage of income and we have moved our central office to a better and cheaper location.
I’m very pleased with that – as a start!
There is much more to do to improve the quality of life of people with sight loss and prevent avoidable sight loss, and we have been preparing a new strategic plan to set out how Pocklington will try to make a significant contribution to this in the next five years. I will tell you more about this in the Spring.
Working together is a major theme for sight loss charities – in 2012 I will be working together with the CEOs of Vision 2020 UK (Mike Brace) and SeeAbility (David Scott Ralphs) in a 3 Tenners Olympic Challenge to hopefully raise £30,000 for sight loss charities – I hope you have already heard about this, and I hope you will be hearing a lot more and giving us your support. http://www.bmycharity.com/3tenners. I am going to have to be a bit patient before I get properly started on this as I have recently broken my foot – so I will make the necessary adjustments and then carry on with the job.
Finally, I would like to say a big thank you to all of our staff , volunteers, service users and everyone who has helped make 2011 a good year in spite of all the gloom around in the big wide world.
I wish you and yours a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Peter
