Committee Reports for 2020

CHAIR’S REPORT

Since the last AGM when I became Chairman, events have been dominated by the Covid Pandemic. Unfortunately this has severely curtailed the endeavours that the branch have been able to support and all face to face activities have been stopped. With the Pandemic waxing and waning and then gaining strength again towards the end of the year, this situation hasn’t changed and the lack of face to face activities and meetings will continue well into 2021 and it is not possible at this stage to advise when this will change.

Zoom Committee Meetings commenced mid-year as a replacement to the face to face meetings. These have been a successful replacement, although when restrictions are lifted and face to face activities restart it will be advisable to recommence holding the meetings live.

Other activities such as the Young Parkinson’s Network and the Monthly Branch Meetings are also now being held on zoom, commencing November and December respectively, with further meetings being organised.

Oscar Corderollana and Kirsty McMillan have been especially helpful in this regard, keeping the YPN going and helping us all to use and understand Zoom.

Unfortunately due to the pandemic, fundraising activities have suffered. However Mary Burton applied for and was successful in her application for Lottery Funding of £10k, to run Parkinson’s exercise classes in South Gloucestershire.

I see three main challenges in 2021:

Finding additional ways of extending support to the Parkinson’s community during the continuing lockdown and ban on live activities.

Re-starting activities when we are able to do so, safely and with the support and guidance of PUK.

Committee recruitment. I am aware that a number of members have exceeded their six years of service and some would like to retire but feel unwilling to leave the committee in the lurch. I am extremely grateful for their commitment, however in fairness to them and for the future of the Branch this activity needs to be treated as a priority.

Clive Mitchell, January 8, 2021.

TREASURER’S REPORT

2020 was a memorable year in so many ways. Even though our branch meetings ceased after the March AGM, and our income was reduced, we still had some lovely donations before March and even in lockdown. These included Geoffrey Pearce and his wedding cars, George and Wendy Gardiner with cards and crafts, Sue and Tricia with lovely cakes at Tai Chi and Carol Lye with beautiful crafts. I visited Carol in the summer and saw her home full of the amazing items she makes. Sadly Carol lost her husband John in 2020 and donated money in his name to the branch. We had another two sad losses. Mrs Carter lost her husband Brian and made donations in his name, and Pat Tazewell gave donations to the branch in the name of her husband Richard, our dear friend and ex- chairman. We were supported by the Delaney family, The Old Bank, Jenny and Simon Rammell and Lorna Barraclough in memory of her uncle. The lovely Irish Dancers had a raffle, Avon and Somerset Police had a non uniform Day and Sonia Crawford, Therapy Admin. Manager at Knowle Clinic had a plant sale.

One of the highlights of the year was organised by Mary Burton , physiotherapist with a speciality in Parkinson’s, based at Thornbury Leisure Centre, who made a brilliant bid to the Lottery Commission. Her successful bid resulted in £10,000 for classes for clients with PD in South Gloucestershire.

For some time now PUK and treasurers of branches have been working towards a system of cash pooling. This means that instead of branches having accounts with numerous different banks, each branch now has its own unique account with its own sort code and account number with just one bank, namely Barclays. This was completed in the summer for our branch and means that PUK can use the facility of cash pooling , in the same way that any bank uses our money, but we retain full control over our account. This has helped PUK because during 2020 it had a significant loss of income, due to many fund raising activities being cancelled.

In June PUK appealed to branches for help in making donations from funds. The committee decided to send £3,000. This was allocated as follows, £1,500 to research, £750 to nursing services and £750 to activities in our region.

Once again I would like to thank Alan Feltham who oversees our accounts, to make sure that they are in good order. As I am writing this at the end of December 2020, what we hope for is a much better and a very successful year in 2021.

Bridget Astley

SECRETARY'S REPORT

We were lucky that our AGM last year was scheduled for early in the month of March. Little did we know of what was to follow later that month. Our branch has always prided itself in the number of different activities that it provides for the members. All that was lost with the start of the national lockdown at the end of March. We immediately lost face to face contact with all our members, at a time when some of them would be very vulnerable. Over time we have managed to build up a number of ‘on-line’ activities to try and replace our previous ones. This includes PD Warrior, a singing class, various keep fit classes, and a coffee morning that, thanks to Dawn May, runs each morning. These and other activities can be found on our branch web site parkinsonsbristol.com

With modern ‘Zoom’ technology we have managed to run a quiz night, and replicate the branch meetings with a virtual branch meeting that had Gary Shaughnessy, Chair of the PUK’s Trustees as our guest speaker. About 30 members attended. These virtual branch meetings have been a success and we plan to repeat them for the branch meeting on Saturday February 6^th and the AGM on Saturday March 6^th. The pandemic has also shown us the value of such things as the newsletter ‘Branchlines’ and the website as a means of staying in touch with our members. It is a worry that some of our members do not have access to the internet, and all the on-line activities mentioned above are not available to them. This makes it difficult to know how they are coping. To ensure that these members get some contact from us, we send postal copies of Branchlines to them but that is a one way street so unfortunately we get no feedback. May I ask any members who have recently got on line but not yet given us their email address to please do so. This will minimise our postal costs down to those that need it.

John Morgan