Welfare Report for Branch AGM
- 2 Mar 05

The Welfare committee for the last twelve months has been Royston Davis (Welfare Officer), Dave Parsons, Chris Nally and Colin Willet (Retired Members).

The Welfare committee has held regular meetings over the last 12 months and both Dave Parsons and Royston Davis represented the branch at the National Welfare AGM in May 04.

In Autumn of 04 Royston attended South West Region Welfare Officer's induction and training course at Taunton.

The committee has throughout the last twelve months continued to monitor and be in contact with current welfare clients. This year we have received 13 requests for assistance / advice from a number of members. We have assisted these members by giving advice, with making claims for assistance from National Welfare and / or directing them to other sources of support, such as SSAFA and Benefits Agency.

It has been considered by the branch committee that the number of approaches received from its membership is quite low for a branch of this size and believe that there are many members out there that are on long term sick that might benefit from a call from us. However, we do not know about them. We therefore request that Stewards of the branch contact us, our contact details are on the branch website, and let us know of any of their members that are off on long term sick. We do not want to intrude, but just let them know that we are there if they require us.

We have had really good commitment from the committee members and it is therefore with sadness that Chris Nally has advised that she has to stand down. Thank you Chris for your assistance and hope to have you back on board again sometime in the future.

The committee therefore needs someone to take her place. If you are interested please could you contact me? On this subject it would be great if we could have someone on the committee from the north of the county. This would assist greatly in helping our members in that part of our world.

For the future the committee is hoping to get out an information pamphlet about organisations that can be of help to our members. This initially is to go to Stewards and retired officer's committee members and will be posted on the website.

Royston Davis
Welfare Officer