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Otago Regional Report July 2008

Our AGM was held on 26 May in Dunedin. Fourteen people attended in Dunedin with another 3 joining us by teleconference link via 2 other venues in Central Otago. This was a really good turn out for us and those in Dunedin stayed behind afterwards to prepare a submission on Schools plus which can now be seen on the website. At this meeting I gave notice that this would be my last year in office as chairperson. It was suggested that we attempt to find an understudy for the position and that we could pay for that person to attend this National Exec meeting with me to get a feel for the role. Some names were suggested for this role, including that of Lesley Signal who could not attend, but no firm decision was reached. Lesley has since volunteered herself and we are all delighted with this.We also decided at this meeting to offer a $150 travel subsidy to conference as we feel that this is a valuable service to offer to our membership. Travel costs seem to be a real issue when travelling to conference from our part of the world and we definitely noticed the larger, probably record, numbers who attended when it was held in Invercargill last year, and the expressed benefit gained from attendance.

By 30 June we had 32 paid up members and 8 people had applied for the travel subsidy. As is usual in Otago we have PTE members as well as schools and we are delighted that staff from Sara Cohen School (for students with intellectual disabilities) has joined us for the first time. It is great to see Career Education Star etc being given a higher profile in this school. Perhaps a strand for a future conference might be looking at career education and advice for people with disabilities.

We have successfully re-established the links with CPANZ in Otago and members now get invited to all their workshops, including upcoming workshops by Heather Carpenter in Dunedin in August at the same rate as CPANZ members.

Lesley Signal has continued to represent us on the Dunedin based Community Group with a careers focus She is currently researching the idea of a careers Festival in Dunedin to bring employers and the community into closer communication.