Over the past year inconTact has seen substantial developments after a period of inactivity caused by the fact that we did not have any employed members of staff following the resignation of our Education Project Officer.
One of our achievements has been a successful application to the National Lottery Charities Board for a two-year grant to pay for a part-time Development Officer and consumer-focussed literature. We were absolutely delighted when in February of this year we got a letter telling us of our success.
Following on from this grant we advertised in the national press both the Development Officer and Project Officer posts. We had some brilliant applicants and were able to appoint two very experienced candidates.
Jolyon Rose, our new Education Project Officer, joins us having recently returned from the sunny South Pacific where he worked on a health education project, training staff and running public education campaigns. Prior to that Jolyon had worked as a health promotion officer in London and Norfolk. He is keen now to hear from anyone involved in public education and to share ideas on how to go forward.
Olive Leonard's background is in the sociology of health and illness and prior to joining us she worked as a Research Fellow in Primary Care at the Southbank University, London. Her last project was on patient involvement in the development of primary health care throughout London.
We feel extremely fortunate to have appointed two such able and experienced people and are looking forward to the organisation going from strength to strength with them in post.
Our main project this year has been the commissioning, from Middlesex University in North London, of a study of the delivery of incontinence products and continence services structure.
This project consists of two parts:-
(1) A questionnaire to all consumer members of inconTact asking them questions that relate to the products they receive, whether any changes have occurred recently and the impact of any such changes on them.
(2) A questionnaire to all Continence Nurse Specialists (Continence Advisors) asking them questions that relate to any budgetary restrictions that might have been placed on them recently and the impact of these, if any, on supply of incontinence products or on service delivery.
For those of you who are not aware, in the UK incontinence products are free and every Health Trust has a budget for product provision. There is anecdotal evidence that with health care rationalisation and reduction in budgets restrictions are being placed on numbers of pads that an individual can obtain and that waiting lists are being imposed. InconTact's study aims to clarify the situation.
It is anticipated that data collection will have been completed by the end of July 1997 and that a final report should have been written by mid-September.
Further programmes for projects are presently being discussed. Olive and Jolyon are already formulating plans of action so we expect the next year will be an exciting, constructive and, hopefully, focused period in our development.
Mandy Wells