Local Groups

South Edinburgh & Midlothian Partnership for people with a physical Disability

(formely Firrhill Fund Committee)

Present:

Anna Annasstassiades, David Hart, Billy McArthur, Angie Cuthbertson, Graham McClelland, Jackie McGeorge, Bill Haddow, David Boucher, Kathleen Kennaway

Apologies:

Anne Denholm, Anne Cherry

This was the first formal meeting of the renamed group who have also adopted a changed constitution.

Various issues were discussed.

Structure

The committee will have a formal meeting(minute) on a 4 weekly cycle.

The group is committed to examining our structure in terms of meeting times, elections and the involvement of more members. At present meetings are open to anyone who wants to come and participate. Our aim is to involve as many interested people as possible.

Communication

The group is committed to communicate its activities to as many people as possible. Minutes of meetings will be distributed within Firrhill. They will also be put on the Firrhill website in the first instance. In the longer term we could perhaps develop our own website. As future projects develop we will consider some kind of newsletter.

Events

The Xmas Meal will take place on Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th December.

Administration

We need to change our bank account and our details with the charities register. Bill will arrange this.

Projects

The main purpose of the name/communication change was to enable us to attract more resources for specific projects. There are a wide range of possible project ideas for which we could possibly attract funding. For the next meeting we will develop a list of possible projects and then try to work out our priority areas. We are presently getting our accounts properly audited, which will be of help with any funding applications.

Advocacy

It was agreed that as well as possibly developing an advocacy project aimed at individuals we should continue to consider taking on advocacy related issues as a group.