Submitted by Carol Dobbins - chairperson NPS(UK)

I can hardly believe that the conference is over. The build up and preparations lasts for months and now I have a few ideas in the pipeline for the next one in 2011 already! Once again, the event was an incredible success. To be honest, it is all a bit of a whirlwind at times and the one thing I always regret is the fact that I often don’t have the time to sit with many of you and get to know you better. However, the charity makes itself available to you all the time, so feel free to call at any time. There is always someone here for you!

It was wonderful to meet a lot of new faces this time too. We had people fly in from various parts of the world, including Australia! Now, that’s dedication! It is always such a wonderful feeling to finally put a face to the names. We were so lucky to have some beautiful children and little babies in attendance too. It kept Sheila and Marion very busy in the play room yet again!

We arrived just after 1pm to be greeted by the friendly staff at the Crowne Plaza yet again. We are lucky to have developed such a great relationship with the staff over the years and it was nice to see them all again.

Next we set up the registration desk with all our information and forms to be filled. We also began to set up each of the rooms that we had hired for the weekend. These included the "Meet and Greet " room, the conference room and the play room. Kath and Shirley set off to fill the hampers that we used for our raffle prizes. They were the best hampers I have ever seen! We had received so many donations from various people that we were forced to add many items to the baskets! The raffle prizes donated, once again, were incredible! We even received a bottle of House of Commons Champagne signed by Mr Gordon Brown himself!!! The winner of this prize donated it back to the charity again, so if anyone has any ideas of how we could raise the best sum of money possible for this please get in touch!

Adele Towers also donated a very generous amount of money for the intention of offering little bags with BP monitors and vitamins to be included in the raffle prizes. These were very appreciated by many people and I am sure that they will benefit people greatly! Thank you so much Adele for your incredible generosity. I was able to purchase 9 monitors and included vitamins in the bags also.

We were also very lucky to have Shirley’s jewellery table. Shirley had kindly offered to make some jewellery to be sold at the conference with all profits going to the charity. I have to be honest; I had no idea that Shirley had so much! There was so much to choose from and her little table created a lot of attention! The items appealed to all ages and I came home with a couple of items too! Thank you Shirley for this lovely idea and generating more income to our charity! If anyone has any talents like this that they would like to bring along to the next conference to sell with the intention of raising some funds for NPSUK please let me know! We would be more than interested to hear from you!

Our sales table looked great too and this year our guests had the opportunity to purchase mugs, pens, pencils, tote bags and bears! We still have a few left so if you would like to purchase some, please let me know.

Our Meet and Greet was a huge success and there were a few people who had came to the conference for the first time so were eager, yet slightly apprehensive about meeting others. Before long, many people had gathered and were beginning to compare body parts! It was nice to see faces from previous conferences and also to see how many people have remained in touch and have become great friends too. Once again, Stephen, Rosie and the lots of the younger kids were selling raffle tickets to everyone they could, including guests in the Hotel! They made a lot of friends yet again and a lot of cash was added to our funds!


It was an early start on the Wednesday morning as the audio-visual people came to set up just after 7! Everything was going to plan. Unfortunately, this year three of our speakers were unable to attend. There was a LOT of re-shuffling the schedule for the day going on behind the scenes and as usual, I was panicking that everything would not go to plan! However, Iain was happy to present Elizabeth’s talk as she was unable to attend due to being heavily pregnant! Adele Towers was also unable to come on this occasion due to some health issues but Kevin was very happy to present her Powerpoint. Iain was also happy to mention a few things about ADHD to fill in for Christine Slavin’s absence too. All in all the talks were all heard and I was happy with the way it turned out. We did miss these strong members of our team though, but I am sure that they will be back with us in two years time!

We were also honoured at have Mark Neugebauer once again to answer any eye related questions. His talk was very interesting yet again.

On this occasion, it was pleasure to invite two new speakers to our conference. The first speaker was Simon Frostick who is a Professor of Orthopaedics. He specialises in upper limb surgery and is very interested in looking at elbow surgery. Professor Frostick was the surgeon who operated on my left elbow and, although the full elbow replacement was not successful on me, we both feel that there have been some great advances made. The tools have all been altered as a result of the surgeries that he undertook on my arm and we believe that there should be more hope for the future. His talk was brilliant and he provided a lot of people with much to think about. I am so honoured to say that he has asked to come on board too and act as our Upper Limb Consultant for NPS patients across in the UK and further afield. He has developed an interest in this condition and wants to learn more. Thank you so much Simon for your support. It is invaluable!

We were also very happy to invite Chris Reynolds who is the Training and Development Manager at the Cheshire West Citizens Advice Bureau. He was there specifically to offer general advice on Disability Living Allowance as that is an area of much concern. A great percentage of the calls we receive are related to benefits and he was able to give some great information in his presentation. We would like to add some of this information to our website as soon as possible. So keep checking!

We were also happy to invite the Everyclick mouse to the conference once again! As usual, he created quite a bit of interest and I think he did his job very well. He was with us for the entire conference this time and he even made a surprise appearance at the Post conference party! If you have not already added your support to NPSUK using Everyclick as your search engine, please do. It earns us such a lot of money and it is a great way to keep our charity funds growing! Right now we have raised over £2,000 and we really need to make sure that everyone keeps supporting us.

At the end of the day, I was approached by Billy and Catriona McLaughlin with a huge cheque. Billy had decided to raise some money for the charity in July (see page 6) and they wanted to present me with a nice surprise. I can tell you that I was not expecting to see that sum total in all my wildest dreams! It was one of those moments when I felt that I truly was dreaming. In my hands, I held a cheque for £2,317. Billy also managed to get donors to sign the Gift Aid box on the sponsor form too which generates another 28p in every pound to our funds! As a result of that, this fundraiser almost raised £3,000! To Billy and Catriona, thank you will never be enough!

The post conference party was, once again, a great event. It started with our DJ having fun on the dance floor with the young children. It was a joy to watch the kids show off their talents and move to the beat! There are some really talented kids in our NPS family!!! We heard the beautiful singing voices of them too. They all seemed to be happy to join in and have fun. Before long, the adults were joining in and then Carol, Kath and Shirley’s evil twins made an appearance too! I am surprised there were still people in the room after they sang! Throughout the night, I was watching how some people have become such close friends and it really shows how special these occasions really are. We find people who are just like us...in many ways. We seem to be so comfortable in each other’s company. I absolutely advise those of you who have never attended a conference to come in the future. It is a memory you will never forget! We also played roll the coin to win a rare bottle of whisky worth a lot of money! Billy was finally crowned champion after a long battle and NPS raised £77 from that alone! Thank you to all who participated! It was great fun!

Sunday morning was the group sessions and it gave many people a chance to air their feelings confidentially. It proved to be a very rewarding experience once again for so many and it just highlights to me the journey that we are all on. Each time, we see new faces and each person is on a different part of that journey. What is important is that we are all there to support one another.

I hope that we continue to see more and more faces in the future. The whole point is to educate and support one another. It is truly an amazing event and I look forward to seeing you all again in 2011!!