The North Coast Committee is pleased to welcome you all to the 2008 Annual General Meeting. This completes yet another year of health service provision to the Indigenous residents of the Sunshine Coast & Gympie regions. I would especially like to thank you all for coming and acknowledge and welcome our distinguished guests.

Will you please join me now in a minute’s silence for the passing of one of our longest serving and sadly missed board members Auntie Lorraine Harvey (Billy Boy). Auntie was a tireless worker for NCACCH and played an important role in the governance of the organisation.

NCACCH Membership

We now have 205 members and 19 associate members from most locations around the coast. This is a 24% increase from last year and the most we have ever had. 224 members is an extremely high figure for an organisation such as ours. The more members we have of course the better insight into what the community wishes are regarding health issues, as well as greater credibility with funding bodies. Hopefully this may lead to more favourable responses regarding the seeking of additional monies to provide people with increased services. NCACCH members from the Cooloola region have increased by 40% on last year to 62 this year which gives that community a significant representation within the organisation.

Queensland Health (QH) funding

NCACCH has been funded by QH over the next 4 years to employ 1 Child Health Worker and 1 Physical Activity person. We received a number of applications for the positions and the board has selected a panel consisting of NCACCH and QH representatives to interview those who have been shortlisted. Results of this process will be published in the next newsletter out in December. We have also been successful in extending the geographical boundaries to include the Cooloola region for the above positions and we thank QH for that excellent decision. Indigenous Cooloola residents will feel more and more part of all health planning and provision as a result of this decision.

Health Statistics for 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008

Copies of all the statistics for the year are in your papers. Please study them at your leisure and ring the office anytime and ask for Kim or Lorraine with any queries you may have.

Total Clients on database 3703
Total Service Providers 74
Total Referrers 31
Number of GP’s: 188 in 37 practices
GP visits: 984 clients made 4127 visits to a Doctor.
Referrals: 494 clients had 634 referrals.
Oral health: 408 people went to a Dentist for 479 visits.
Mental health: 102 people attended Counselling with 232 visits.
New HAC cards: 219 additional people became clients with 292 dependents

You will note that the dental program is being utilised by a great deal of people. This has put an additional strain on the NCACCH budget and I must take this opportunity to inform all members of the other options available from the public health system.
There is a free Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dental Program available through the Qld Health Clinics at Nambour and Caloundra hospitals for Indigenous clients to access. To be eligible you must hold a current Queensland issued Concessions Card such as a Health Care / Pension / Senior Card as issued by Centrelink. More details on this program are available in your papers.

New Gympie Office

Since the last AGM we have opened another office in Gympie due to community demand and the number of referrals we were getting from there. Sharelle, our Project Officer, is present at the office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and will provide people with referrals and health relevant community information.

41 HAC applications and updates have been lodged at our Gympie office since opening and 50 Referrals have been sought and approved. The office has also been utilised for community meetings and get togethers on a number of occasions. This has given the Gympie community a sense of ownership and inclusion which can only be beneficial to all.

New Database

The first phase of our Indigenous Database has been finalised. We are now in the process of developing Phase 2 which will provide greater report extraction capabilities. We are very excited about this rather unique database as in the next few months it will allow a number of doctor’s surgeries to access it directly and input GP visits electronically.

Mum’s & Bub’s Program

We currently have 10 clients participating in our pilot Mum’s and Bub’s Program. We have now had 7 healthy babies born since we began in November last year. NCACCH will also be applying for extra funding through the Department of Health and Ageing for the Mum’s and Bub’s – New Directions Program, this will open up the program to allow more young parents to participate.

2008 Health Survey

Some of you will have participated in the recent 2008 health needs survey conducted by NCACCH. We have enclosed the results of this survey in your meeting papers. Those issues of most importance to people have basically remained the same since we began surveying the community back in 2001/2 ie; GP visits, Dental & Mental health etc.

Well Person’s Health Check Days

NCACCH hosted both these days in Maroochydore and Gympie in the months of March and April respectively. These days are opportunities for Indigenous families to begin the process of accessing the full adult and child health checks by your own chosen doctor and available free through Medicare. We would like to thank all the participating service providers who attended on the days, especially the Division of General Practice. They generously provided the doctors for the exit interviews as well as nurses free of charge for us on the days. Also Queensland Health (QH) for the Indigenous Health Team, the Cultural Healing Team and others nurses for the staffing of the health stations. 60 people went and completed a full Adult health check with their own GP as a result of these days.
A full report on both of these days is included in your papers.

“Sexual Health & Relationships through the Eyes of an Indigenous Teenager” Poster Competition

Once again NCACCH hosted another poster competition in order to see what our young people think of when we ask them about “sexual health”. The 12 best entries became the basis for the NACCCH 2008-09 Sexual Health Calendar. We have included one with your papers tonight for you to share with your friends and colleagues.

Organisational Accreditation

We are well on our way towards achieving our accreditation as a best practice organisation. This has taken us longer than anticipated and the accreditation funding that we requested from OATSIH proved to be insufficient. All Aboriginal Medical Services in Australia have until June 2011 to gain their accreditation and the Federal Government has just announced additional funding to help organisations do this. NCACCH will also be applying for some of these additional funds to complete the task.

Men’s & Women’s Groups

Approximately 24 men have attended our Men’s Groups and participated in a variety of activities including hearing checks and healthy cooking etc. Approximately 33 women attended the Women’s Groups, held at different venues around the coast which included guest speakers from Australian Hearing, healthy cooking with Qld Health and low intensity exercises with the ladies. We would like to see more people attend these days, so please keep them in mind and talk to your friends about them.

Training Opportunities

NCACCH staff have attended a number of training courses over the last year:
• Financial training with QAIHC & MYOB
• Certificate IV’s in Project Management
• File-Trac Correspondence database
• Computer program office applications
• Front Line Management
• NCACCH website Management
• New NCACCH Indigenous Health Database training for all staff.
Conferences, Symposiums & Workshops attended

• Indigenous Doctors Association AGM
• Presentation at the Sexual Health Conference
• The 8th Annual Health Professionals Symposium, Breaking Down the Barriers to Diabetes Self-Management
• Queensland University of Technology NCACCH Brokerage Model Presentation
• NACCHO AGM & National Conference
• National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Sexual Health and Blood Borne
Virus Workshop
• 2008 Deadly Sex Congress
• Qld Health Chronic Disease Forum
• Chronic Disease: Better by a Country Mile
• Diabetes Australia: Eat Well

Representations

NCACCH retains membership of and is regularly represented in the following organisations and committees;
* National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation – our national peak body
* Queensland Aboriginal & Islander Health Council – our state peak body
* Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Corporation Health Education & Training-an Indigenous Health Worker Registered Training Organisation
* Sunshine Coast & Wide Bay Regional Health Forum
* Sunshine Coast & Cooloola District Health Forum – a Qld Health initiative
* Office for Indigenous Policy Co-ordination - Shared Responsibility Agreement
* Sunshine Coast Indigenous Network Group – local interagency
* Sunshine Coast Substance Misuse Forum – OATSIH initiative
* Sunshine Coast Division of General Practice-Australian Better Health Initiative (ABHI)
* Connecting HealthCare in Communities (CHIC) - a QH initiative
* Sunshine Coast Indigenous Network Group (SCING)
* Gympie Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Steering Committee
* University of the Sunshine Coast Vice Chancellors Indigenous Advisory Committee
* Cooloola Health Indigenous Service Meeting (CHISM)
* Community Smoking, Nutrition, Alcohol and Physical Activity Group (SNAP)
* Sunshine Coast & Gympie NAIDOC Committees

New CATSI Act

We need to call a Special Meeting before 30 June 2009 to alter our rules in order to meet the requirements of new CATSI Act and to become incorporated under them. NCACCH will send to all members the changes required to the Rules early next year and the date scheduled for that meeting.

The NCACCH Committee & Staff

Finally, the Committee has met formally for board meetings on ten (10) occasions as well as attending a number of workshops on Risk Management, Governance, Capacity Building, reporting on the SDRF 07/08 Action Plan as well as the development of the 2008/09 NCACCH SDRF Action Plan. This has ensured the good running and management of North Coast and shows the high level of commitment from the people you elected.
I would like to thank my fellow board members;
* Helen Felstead (Secretary)
* Gordon Browning (Ordinary Committee Member)
whose positions along with mine are up for re-election tonight.
Auntie Olive Bennet as Treasurer, Ronda Randall and Paula Wootton as Ordinary Committee Members, for the commitment and dedication they have all shown to this organisation during their time with us. I would also like to acknowledge Melba Townsend who kindly agreed to take the remaining position on the board when Auntie took sick. Melba was on the board years ago so it didn’t take long to familiarise herself with the induction procedure. This Board feels that our organisation has come a very long way since the late 90’s and are very proud to be associated with it. This could not have been achieved without the hard work, dedication and perseverance shown by this and previous committees.
I would now like to thank the staff;
NCACCH is very lucky to have staff of such calibre who dedicate themselves to providing the best professional service they can to those people in need while at the same time getting a great deal of job satisfaction from it as well.

We were also very lucky with the recruitment of Kim Helmore, the new Operations Manager. Kim has proved to be highly skilled and dedicated to helping Indigenous people and a great help for John in the day to day management of NCACCH. Her administrative knowledge, commitment and personality have been received extremely well as she was accepted into the team even before her probation period expired.

I thank you all for coming and look forward to seeing you all again next year. Good health to you, your families and friends!

Tom Cleary, Chairperson on behalf of the NCACCH Committee.

Archive:

2005 Annual Report

  2006 Annual Report