Get Well UK Annual Report 2005/2006
This text tells you the straight facts about Get Well UK’s year – what we did and who helped us to do it. You can listen to a more animated version, as an interview with Founder and Managing Director, Boo Armstrong.
Thank you to the following people and their organisations that have supported us during the year.
Jane Tebbey from Morley Fund Management mentored Boo Armstrong, which was arranged through a relationship with Business in the Community.
Gail Crawford and colleagues from Latham Watkins gave pro bono legal support for the development of our IT software.
Anna Lee from Arcadia University in London supported us through their intern programme in collaboration with IndianaUniversity. This year we worked with Tim Dziubek and Jessica Shelby, both final year marketing students.
Richard Alderson and Marta Garcia from UnLtd, who have worked with us through the UnLtd Ventures Team, helping especially with financial modelling. We are also grateful to UnLtd for hosting our Board meetings.
The Sales Force Foundation donated us 10 user licenses for their fabulous software.
NHS colleagues who have given their time to explain how things work, and how reform is unfolding in the NHS.
Reports
You can see what we published here www.getwelluk.com/publications and you can read the credits there too.
Awards
We won two awards this year, details here www.getwelluk.com/awards
Getting the message out
During this year Boo spoke at the following events:
The Be The Change conference 2005 www.bethechange.org.uk you can watch a clip there if you are really keen - look for the 2005 10 minute video.
The General Osteopathic Council’s regional conferences throughout the year. www.osteopathy.org.uk
Futurebuilder’s learning conference www.futurebuilders-england.org.uk/
Expert Witness at the School of Social Entrepreneurs
The Isis Project in Sunderland – the first community who have taken it upon themselves to set up a complementary medicine policy as a town rather than waiting for the PCT to respond to patient needs and wants. (We heard from a GP who has a jumble sale to raise money for complementary therapies for patients).
The All Party Parliamentary Group on INtegrated and and Alternative Medicine at the House of Commons.
Staff
Lakshmi Shivalanka who helped in the founding year of Get Well UK left early in the year. Replaced by Zoë Horton as Customer Services Administrator and Tessa Gaynn who sometimes supported Zoë in this role.
Liz Mayhew joined in the role of Business Development Manager and worked with us for most of the year, during a very challenging time within the NHS
Cabby Laffy and Liz Pinder-Ayres have been our supervisors for the year, offering clinical supervision to our practitioners.
Board of Directors
During the year we have had the ongoing support and guidance from:
David Phillips OBE, Chair
Polly McLean, Company Secretary
Fiona Incledon,
Alex Fraser,
Boo Armstrong
New appointments:
Nigel Beverley - a former chief executive of a number of primary care trusts, with experience working for the Department of Health inEngland.
Ian Swash - has been a practising osteopath for more than thirty years and led the osteopathic college at Oxford-Brookes.
Retirements:
Daniel Dacre and Ratna Vahora both left during the year.
Developing Networks
We held a Get Well Scotland meeting, with the support of SenScot, where we met many people working in the field of complementary medicine, tried to document some of their stories, and look at the opportunities for working in the NHS there.
We ran a supervision weekend for people from across theUK to look at, review, and train people in the model that has been developed by Get Well UK. We started to create an infrastructure so that as the service rolls out we’ll have supervisors in place and ready to support practitioners to be the best they can be and to ensure the best and safest service for our patients.