An AGM Update

Last Monday night, the Dad and I trundled into town to attend the DS Dublin AGM. The flyer that came in the post a few weeks before mentioned speech and language, and we were hooked. Who does not want to hear about a way to provide your child with speech and language. We parked on Exchequer street, almost infront of the meeting location, very handy. It felt like it's been years since I've been out in town at night. This is as close to a night on the town it gets for us at the moment.
When we got to the meeting, with plenty of time to spare, we sat down with Noah's parents for a little chat before hand. Things kicked off after 8, the usual AGM stuff....
Then, the S&L proposal. DS Dublin have been putting in a lot of research into hiring a S&L therapist. Some of the other local branches have been able to get this up and running, Kerry, Limerick, Galway, to name but a few. All have done it their own way, but it has been done. The proposal is to follow the Kerry model, and it seems that they have been very helpful in giving advice.
Kerry have managed to hire a senior S&L therapist through additional membership and increased fundraising. Their therapist travels to three locations in Kerry once a week, and the famillies in that area then go to her/him. The courses run in 8 week blocks, with a 6 week break between. You atend a one on one session every two weeks. It cost €40 per session (as oposed to about €90 privatly). The fact that Kerry have been able to offer this has attracted more families to join their branch, thus brining in more money in membership and fundraising. This extra money pays for the therapisit's travel costs and it also pays for the three locations which are needed. DSI head office look after the payrole for the therapist. A senior therapist was hired at first to set everything up and put the systm in motion. Once this is done, a gradute can be hired at a much reduced cost to assist the senior therapist.
To me, this sounds fantastic. It can only be beneficial to all of us. However, aparently the membership of the Dublin branch only stands at 300. To me, for the size of this city, it sounds tiny. Where is everyone? Maybe because we are new to all this, we've been very enthusiastic about joing the branch. I mean, the talks that are organised, I think, are well worth the €20 joining fee. As far as I know, in the next few weeks, a questionaire will be sent out to all members asking if they feel that this would be a service they would like to avail of. There will be a sub-commitee set up to orgainse the logistics of the whole thing, and members will be asked to volunteer. I've voluenteered to help, even though we are lucky to have access to a S&L therapist now through our services provider, who knows what might happen in the future. It's better to have a back up of some kind. It seems that there is a lot of work involved in the set up, but once it is up and running, it runs itself.

And this leads me nicely to fundraising for this worthy cause. Last year, DS Dublin got 100 women to run/ jog/ walk the Women's Mini Marathon. They asked for 20 members to bring along 5 friends to make up the number. This year they are looking for 250!!!! So do it now, registeration is open....I'm signing up, hopefully, I'll get to do it, as long as the little fella isn't in the hospital with his heart..... So I'll be houding you all for a couple of euro a few weeks before the race. Would you like to sign up?

Can I do the Marathon on this?

And on a little personal note, a friend of mine is flying the coup, and moving to the sunny beaches of the Caymen Islands. Nice work if you can get it!!! Unfortunatly, due to a very important french relative (my god mother) flying in yesterday, we could not make it to her leaving party last night. So Lisa, have a great time, I am so jealous that you get to live under the sun for a few years...... We will all be over to invade your place for a holiday, I promise.....