This is an update from Margaret Rodgers, our CEO.
We are in the last months of delivering the Participant Readiness for the NDIS workshops so if you live in Brisbane or the south east region and you haven’t been to any workshops or information sessions yet I would encourage you to sign up for one of the sessions in the coming weeks. For an update of our latest events, please see our Fortnightly Event Update post, which can be found under Latest News on our landing page. This also includes a link to our latest date claimer.
We finish that work in mid-December and the NDIA will take over participant readiness activities from January.
After three years of delivering this big project CRU will look quite different in 2018. We expect to be offering a much smaller calendar of events for 2018 and all of our events will once again have a fee. We are just starting planning now and will get those details out to you as soon as possible. CRU will continue a small number of Participant Readiness consultations to families of people supported by the State Government Accommodation Support and Respite services in the first half of 2018.
We still have some funding from the State government until mid 2019 so we will be able to continue visiting each region at least once per year. We are always open to hearing what would be helpful in your region.
Along with just about every organisation in the sector, we are working hard to replace our funding and survive this transition to the NDIS and have lots happening on that front at the moment. We have submitted a variety of tenders, all of which include statewide travel, and will let you know if any of those are successful. When our finance officer Bill Kyle left CRU earlier this year we restructured the position and Rebecca Blackmore has joined us to coordinate our business supports. Janene will continue to assist with book keeping. This is such a critical piece of work behind the scenes at CRU. Bill did a great job in that role for 6 years and we look forward to working now with Rebecca and Janene.
Our biennial survey will be out soon and we would appreciate your thoughts and feedback – it too will have some focus on future sustainability.
You may have seen flyers for the Leadership Event on Friday 3rd November – we are hosting a seminar focusing on the topic “Investing in the Future – what one person can do” – with a panel of four local speakers who will be joined by Michael Kendrick. Following this seminar we will be holding a dinner to recognise the contribution that Michael has made to people with disabilities, their families and supporters here in Queensland over the past 30 years. Michael has been a regular visitor during that time and has had a close association with CRU and many other organisations. So if you have worked with Michael at some stage over the last three decades or are just interested in the seminar topic then please feel free to join us. Please click on this link to register
Our AGM is on Wednesday 29th November in the CRU office and we invite you to join or renew your membership and to join us for the AGM. This is the first AGM since our transition to a Company in March so there are some procedural changes but the mission and vision of CRU and the role of members remains unchanged.