Chair’s Report 2023

This is my fifth report as Chair of UCH London Nurses’ Charity. My thanks to the trustees, members of the Benevolent Fund Committee and volunteers without whose work the charity would not continue. Our work has been successful over 2023, we continue to award education and benevolent fund grants, we have good liaison with UCLH and our media presence on the website and Facebook is impressive with online sales increasing. Our finances will be reported on by Theresa Wiseman our Treasurer and Wendy Knibb who is responsible for investments. The work I’ve led on over the last year has focused on four areas:

1. Modernisation and governance

• Internal processes – Secretarial, support from Kate Warwick and in the future Amanda Harrington for ACM Minutes.
• Publicising our policies and application processes; increasing the number of awards.
• Online processes for trustee meetings, BF meetings and consequently reducing running costs of the charity.

2. Trustees and volunteers

• 12 trustees – 1 new 2022 (Deborah Glover) + 1 new Jan 2023 (Janet Doyle Blunden)
• BF 8 members (2 new 2022 – Anne Arber as Chair, Amanda Harrington)

3. Liaison

• with UCLH – Chief Nurses’ Monthly Bulletin, Preceptee awards
• with MDX Nurses’ League – future of London Nurses’ Leagues
• with Facebook group

4. Dissemination work

• Website
• Archive project – we need to digitise our documents to construct an online resource for future generations of nurses.
• Magazine – positive feedback on 2022’s edition.

It feels as if we’ve been through an exceptionally busy and challenging time since I took over as Chair in 2019. We have established good governance processes and systems, launched a website including an online shop, and Facebook presence as well as increased our liaison with UCLH. We now need to think about the future.

We have had to pack up the office as the lease held by the UCLH trust has been given up and we are negotiating with the Chief Nurse at UCLH to have our registered address at trust headquarters along with access to a computer and some filing space. I have met with Daniel Scott-Davies, UCLH trust archivist on what we can archive. And I have emailed UCL Special Collections to see if we can add some materials to that collection. The office’s current materials/documents are in lockable storage.

I have also been contacted by the Middlesex League to talk about how we have expanded our membership and developed an online presence through the website and Facebook. I have been invited to a meeting about the future of the London Leagues as the majority have closed since 2000. We were given a presentation in 2018 by the Nurses Guild about potential membership rather than independent existence. Janet Doyle Blunden is writing a long-term strategy/plan for the future of the Charity.

If you’d like to be involved in the work of the Charity over the next few years, there are trustee positions available:

• Trustee/treasurer
• Trustee/digital archiving work

Professor Helen T Allan
Chair UCH London Nurses’ Charity
13th February 2023