Hello
just wanted to say what a great web page this is and how easy it is to get in touch. look forward to reading about whats happening in the forums very soon

A huge thank you to all who attended the Forum Open Day on the Isle of Wight on March 9th. The stands from Sense, IOW Society for the Blind, Action on Hearing Loss, Specsavers, Pamtrad and the local Independent Living Centre were really informative. Special thanks to Ian, the forum member who was the driving force behind the event.

I am pleased to comfirm that the Isle of Wight has just successfully held it's first Open Day.

This event follows the first Forum meeting that took place a few short weeks before Xmas which lead to the idea of an Open Day.

The event was supported by local organisations such as Action on Hearing Loss, The Isle of Wight Society for the Blind as well as a newly formed Independent Living Service/ Also companies who provide services and manufacture equipment for Deaf Blind people such as Specsavers and Pamtrack.

I would like to thank Sam, Rosie, Debbie, Graham and especially Emma for their support and help and those who came in for making the day a huge success.

Another brilliant forum held in Lincoln recently. The discussion, led by one of the forum members: medieval battle re-enactment! The variety of topics at the forums is just fantastic.

Many thanks to those who attended the forum in Hampton last Tuesday - we had lots of useful discussion about 'gadgets' - particularly from Ken with his Trekker Breeze GPS and iGlasses. It was lovely to get the forum up and running again - looking forward to the next one!

Dates for your diary!

Nottingham Forum 2013

16th May – Mary Potter Centre 10.30-12.30
(Lunch after meeting)

17th July – Boat trip, from Colwick Marina
NG4 2 DW
Sail at 10am-1pm on St John’s Ambulance Waterwing (max 22 people)
Reserve your place now! £5 per head

18th Sept – Mary Potter centre 10.30-12.30 (Lunch after meeting)

Activities and speakers to be arranged.

Please contact Rose Kimmings
Tel 07747773001
E-mail rose.kimmings@sense.org.uk

Loughborough Forum 2013
Dates for meetings
The name in brackets is the person who will facilitate the forum

March 26th Salvation Army Hall (Anita)

April 29th visit to Wigston group (Salvation Army Hall, Ladywood Road, Wigston LE18 4UZ) Rose

May 28th Salvation Army hall (Anita)

June 25th Salvation Army Hall (Anita)
July 29th Boat Trip Peter le Marchant Trust departs 10am-3pm. Rose

August 27th Salvation Army Hall Rose

September 24th Salvation Army Hall (Anita)

October 29th Salvation Army Hall Fish and Chip lunch Rose

November 26th Salvation Army Hall (Anita)

December Xmas Tree Event (date to be confirmed) Rose

On 29th April the Wigston and Loughborough forums will be joining forces to raise issues about bus travel with managers from the city council and the local bus company. It will be an interesting meeting and will hopefully lead to in some positive changes for deafblind bus travellers in Leicestershire. For details, contact emma.mold@sense.org.uk or rosie.tabrizi@sense.org.uk

On 9th April 2013 there will be a meeting of forum members and Sense staff in Peterborough. This is a chance for people to share stories and successes from their local groups and find out what's happening elsewhere. On 9th we will also be talking about how to get more people involved in these national meetings and starting to plan an event to celebrate 'all things forum'! Information and notes about the meeting, and previous meetings, are available from emma.mold@sense.org.uk or rosie.tabrizi@sense.org.uk

I just wanted to say really enjoyed the live web chat experience on Thursday. Very interesting. Thanks to all who took part. If anyone would like a copy of the transcript then please contact Emma at emma.mold@sense.org.uk

Sense meeting: 29 April 2013. This meeting was different because we were fortunate to have our sister group from Loughborough join us. It was good to exchange views and realise they have the same day to day difficulties, just one example is local transport. Hopefully the guests today can resolve a few of these issues. It was an enjoyable meeting. Trusting we can get together again in the near future. RP, Sense Wigston.

Jackie Elshaw (guide dogs) coming to talk to Charnwood group (Leicestershire) on 28th May
Talk by Kathy Price lip reader teacher, Charnwood 27th August
Lincoln forum 26th June 10.30-12.30 (new venue) The Old School Nettleham.
Lincoln forum September (date to be confirmed) Whisby Nature park (walk around nature reserve and visit exhibition centre).
Nottingham forum 18th September talk by Lip reader teacher Kathy Price.
Contact rose.kimmings@sense.org.uk for more information

The Birmingham Citizens' Forum is organising a camping trip. It will be a fun and very active two days, including walking, low ropes, woodland and pony Study, night-Line, BBQ, and building camp fires. Here are the details:

Date: 22nd – 23rd June 2013 (12.00pm Finish)

Venue:
Bell Heath
Outdoor Education Centre
Quantry Lane
Belbroughton
West Midlands
DY9 9UU

Contact:
Deb Hughes – 07870 169522

I would like to thank all who came to the Forum meeting on Tuesday 21st May. We spent most of the meeting looking at our shopping experiences and some very interesting points were noted as part of the Sense Shopping Expeience Survey, we were very pleased to be able to hold our meeting in good time to contribute.

As always Sense provided us with excellent support, and many thanks to Emma Mold and Debbie Snooks for their help and comming to the Island to be with us.

Following our meeting in Peterborough which seems a while ago now, we agreed that I would help Emma and Rosie to formulate a Charter for the Consultative Forum Group.

I can now report that we are almost ready to pass onto the forums the proposed Charter for your comments ready for aproval at the next Consultative Forum Group meeting.

Please watch this space for more details soon.

The 1st Herts forum was held recently at the AWC in Barnet and the attendence far exceeded our expectations, so a big thank you to everyone who attended and helped to make it a great success.
Graham informed the group of the refurbishment of the centre and asked forum members to feed back their ideas to access the facilities. We also had a talk from Hannah from the holidays team, which inspired many members to think about becoming involved.
We will be arranging the next forum for this Autumn.

With work now commencing on the second half of Birmingham New Street train station, I am interested to know if any members have visited the newly opened part of Birmingham New Street and the new taxi drop off point area. What are your thoughts/opinions – good, bad or indifferent? Look forward to reading your comments.

I just wanted to alert members, and staff, of a HMRC email scam. The email looks very authentic, with the subject heading “Submit Your Payment Refund Notification No; ….”. I have contacted the HMRC and the spokesperson confirmed these are definitely bogus emails which are a widespread problem, and not to be opened. If you are of curious nature, most certainly do not fill in your bank and any personal details on the link. I had explained to the spokesperson that as a preference, a lot of visually impaired people are turning towards electronic correspondence which makes this quite a concern. I was assured that for security reasons HMRC never use email whatsoever. So please, if you do receive an email from HMRC suggesting you are due a refund forward it to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk - no message is needed, just forward it on. An acknowledgement email will be received from the HMRC Online Security Team.

Thanks to Jill for this update on what was a brilliant meeting. Just to add, a highlight for me was when one of the forum members told the group about her wonderful experiences of Sense holidays - the first hand knowledge, along with the imaginative presentation by Hannah from the Holidays Team, got everyone thinking about the possibilities for 'getting away from it all'!

We had our 1st forum for Herts at AWC. Centre on 31st May it was a successful day meeting other people and all feedbacks were most helpful with ideas of what we want to do. Was impressed to hear all the refurbishment of the centre am sure we are looking forward to trying out at a later time when things get organised. A big thank you to Jill Kirbyshire along with her staff team and the lovely team of interpreters and CGs for all your support. Looking forward to Autumn for further details.

Great to hear from you about the forum Janet! Please keep us posted about future meetings.

If you are a forum member, or a Sense staff member/volunteer who supports forums, would you be interested in joining our new Facebook group? It's a new way for people to keep in touch outside of the regular meetings. It's also a way of getting to know about forums in other areas and celebrating your local group.

If you're already on Facebook, search for 'Emma Mold - Sense' and I will invite you to become a forums group member. If Facebook is something new for you, Sense can advise you about setting up an account and about privacy settings. Or, email me at emma.mold@sense.org.uk if you have any questions about the Facebook group.