2023 DiMHN AGM
Katharine Lazenby and Steven Brown had both asked to be considered for another three-year term, and had been interviewed during October alongside other applicants. Four Trustees had resigned due to personal workload and insufficient time to commit. Philip Ross said ‘a special thank you’ for all that Trudi Beswick, Alex Caruso, and Garry Charlton had contributed. Following these announcements, and during its annual planning session, the DiMHN Board had co-opted Beatrice Fraenkel and Lianne Knotts onto the Board, recognising the contributions they had already made as Associates. As part of the DiMHN governing process, both Beatrice and Lianne had been required to stand down and apply formally for the role of Trustee, which they did in October. (Details on all the DiMHN’s current Trustees and Associates can be found at
https://dimhn.org/board-and-associates/) Philip Ross additionally noted that the Informed Choices scheme had now been in existence for eight years, with the recent start of product testing a ‘huge milestone’. The scheme has also been included in the latest supplements to Health Building Notes HBN 03-01 and HBN 03-02. DiMHN Chair Emeritus, Jenny Gill, offered her congratulations. This concluded the Chair’s report, which was duly proposed and accepted.
CEO’s report In her CEO’s report, Hannah Chamberlain said 2023 had been ‘a momentous one for the organisation, marked by a series of firsts’, as the charity moves into an operational ‘exec’ team, overseen by the Board, and supported by the Associates. She said: “Detail on the individual Workstreams will follow, and thanks must go to the Workstream leaders for chairing and contributing to meetings.” The clear message running through the individual Workstream reports was, she said, one of increased activity and capacity for the organisation, through having a central operational hub, resulting in ‘an uptick in engagement with the membership and communications outreach’. “As we come to year-end,” the DiMHN CEO added, “we’re homing in on the impact we want to make as an organisation on the design in
conference/exhibition income and attendance for 2024.
3 Supporting a review of the DiMHN’s governance and structure.
4 Increasing membership engagement via the Network’s mailing list. She said: “The listening exercise has been widely promoted to members, and over 80 conversations with members have taken place and been recorded to date – to see what works for our members, what we should start, stop, and keep, doing.” The different communities and professions in the membership had also been profiled. The plan for growth in profile,
Philip Ross explained that the DiMHN had asked the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) to undertake an independent review of the charity and its governance and policies, and to supply recommendations for further improvement.
mental health landscape.” When she was interviewed for the
CEO role, Hannah Chamberlain said she had presented a plan for the first year of executive operations ‘characterised by the four L’s – Listen, Learn, Leverage, and Lead’. She expanded: “The first two are about listening to and learning from the membership, and the second two about taking growth ideas and synthesising them with our wider aims to maximise the impact of the Network’s charitable aims for the membership and our ultimate beneficiaries – users of mental health settings. Now we are turning to the second two L’s – tuning up our activity, maximising the impact of suggestions for change, and creating impact by leading – with a particular focus on the evidence base and co-production.”
Four objectives for operations At the start of 2023, Hannah Chamberlain had agreed with Philip Ross four objectives for operations, all four of which had been delivered against: 1 Engaging with the membership and conducting a listening exercise, since dubbed ‘100 conversations’. 2 Creating a plan for increased
conference, and exhibition revenue, and attendance for 2024, had also been established, with ‘a timely move’ to a new venue, Manchester Central, with its ‘enhanced profile’ and greater capacity. She said: “Exhibitor figures are up, and we anticipate a busy conference and exhibition floor, while the interactive DiMHN stand in Coventry, with feedback from the membership, enabled us to gather more concerted input from our members; we’re planning a similar future drive.”
Hannah Chamberlain said the
governance review highlighted by Philip Ross had been conducted by the NCVO, and supported by a full day of feedback to the Board, with Trustee and Associate role descriptions consequently reviewed. Regular mailouts had gone out to members highlighting opportunities to engage, information days, supporting conference organisations, and requests for input. At the time of the 2023 AGM, the DiMHN was completing the first two of the L’s of the ‘year one plan’ – ‘learning from the information gathered from the membership in the listening exercise’. She said: “To Leverage and Lead, we need to next sift that membership feedback for what fits with our strategic aims and the impact we want to see. This work is ongoing, and an exercise in co-production, as we come together as Board and ‘Exec’ under Philip’s expert chairing.” She dubbed the work ‘a systematic exercise which has taken concerted time and energy, and required much of the Board in terms of scrutinising and analysing our purposes as a charity’. She also thanked the Board for
During the year the BRE held open days at its Watford headquarters for specifiers and NHS colleagues to give them a clearer feel for how the new Informed Choices testing process is undertaken.
12 FEBRUARY 2024 | THE NETWORK
Photos used courtesy of BRE
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