We’re coming to the end of 2016, and celebrating Christmas with our friends in our new base in Somers Town Community Association. We’re getting really excited about the opening of the Somers Town & St Pancras Town Living Centre, at the beginning of January.
Although it has been a dramatic year in the wider world of politics and current affairs, and a challenging one in the world of health and social care, here in Healthwatch Camden we feel we’ve had a good year. Having to leave our original base in Kentish Town was sad, but we feel very much at home in Somers Town.
We’ve collaborated on two really interesting projects, working with users at the Highgate mental health day centre, and with Independent Age on a study of care homes. Reports from each project will be published early in 2017. We’ve made a difference with our reports on GP services and on Bangladeshi health and wellbeing. We’ve met loads of people at community events.
We’ve had help from some fantastic volunteers – Our volunteers visited care homes, some helped in the office and others helped to promote us at community events. We’ve also had help from great colleagues in the voluntary sector, especially our friends at Voluntary Action Camden – we miss them! We’ve also been assisted by some good allies in health and social care services, people who really do value user input and who use our reports constructively.
And we could not do anything without our wonderful trustees. This year we said goodbye to two of them – Alison Lowton and Claire Barry – who had come to the end of their term of office. We are so very grateful for all their support.
We welcomed three new trustees, Jessica Warne, Saloni Thakrar and Sanjay Ganvir and we’re looking forward to working with them towards a successful 2017.
We wish all our friends and supporters a very happy and peaceful Christmas and a thriving 2017.
