Whats Been Happening at Pain Concern?

What's Been Happening ......South of the Border

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• ABPI /LMCA On 25 November Anne Damerell represented Pain Concern at an ABPI/LMCA Health Forum entitled 'Coming of Age- Grown up Stakeholder Involvement'. Anne reported that there were a number of interesting speakers at the event.
• Heather attended an ABPI Workshop entitled 'Meet the Industry/Voluntary Health Sector' in London on 25 February. The purpose of this very useful workshop was to enable people working in both sectors to understand each other’s needs and responsibilities.
• The LMCA held their AGM & Annual Forum on 10th May and again Anne Damerell represented Pain Concern. The theme of the afternoon forum was 'Unlocking the potential of people with long-term conditions'.
• NEUROLOGICAL ALLIANCE Anne Damerell continues to represent Pain Concern at the Neurological Alliance and attended their Conference and AGM in November, which included speakers from the disability Rights Commission, and the Commission for Social Care Inspection.
• THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN Our Patron, Claire Rayner, was asked to speak at an event entitled ‘Living with Pain’, hosted The Royal Institution of Great Britain.
• OPEN MINDS The Opiods and Pain European Network of Minds recently launched a White Paper on the use of Opiods for Chronic Pain. Pain Concern was asked to give a statement for the press release for the White Paper.
• FUNDRAISING Olga Hamer, international competition diver will be representing Great Britain at the European Masters Championships in Sweden next month. Olga has chosen to use this event to raise funds for Pain Concern and The COB Foundation and to raise awareness of people living with chronic pain. We wish Olga and her teammates success at the competition.
• We recently received grants from two organisations, The Sir Jules Thorn Trust and The Charities Advisory Trust to purchase a folding machine. This will speed up processing our leaflets orders immensely.
• DIPEX Dipex launched the new chronic pain section of its website (www.dipex.org/chronicpain) at the beginning of the British Pain Society Annual Scientific meeting on the 8th of March. Margaret Kerr and Fred Edrich represented Pain Concern on the focus groups for the chronic pain section of this website Heather Wallace was a member of the advisory panel.
• BRITISH PAIN SOCIETY PATIENT LIAISON GROUP Heather Wallace has been regularly attending meetings of this group and keeping us up to date. The British Pain society held a parliamentary launch for the Global Day against Pain. For more info visit www.britishpainsociety.org and www.efic.org.uk
• NATIONAL SERVICE FRAMEWORK FOR LONG TERM CONDITIONS On July 19 the Department of Health hosted a conference in London entitled ‘Getting to Grips with the National Service Framework for Long-term Conditions: A 10 Year Strategy’. Andrew Scott represented Pain Concern at the conference. Andrew attended the workshop entitled Getting the Best from Patient Groups facilitated by David Pink of LMCA and Judith Kidd of the Neurological Alliance.