Margaret Blackwood's AGM looks at their Big Challenge

The 33rd Annual General Meeting of Margaret Blackwood Housing Association was held on Monday 21st August at Edinburgh's Our Dynamic Earth. Under the theme of Our Big Challenge, Robin Burley, Chair of the Board, told the meeting that the Association was emerging from a period of profound internal and external change, fitter and stronger and ideally placed to meet the challenging targets it was setting itself. Chief Executive Peter Mountford-Smith highlighted the Association's mission - to drive innovation and quality in accessible housing and support in Scotland - before looking forward for the next few years and defining the Association's key objectives, namely to: build 500 new homes in the next five years, of which 20% will be fully designed around the needs of wheelchair users increase the Association's activity in the care and support sector by 50% over the next five years achieve overall satisfaction levels of 85% amongst service users de-register their care homes by 2010 and provide innovative alternative care packages focused even more closely on the personal needs of individual service users be in the top quartile in relation to their peer group housing associations for 75% of the activities measured by performance indicators achieve a surplus of 5% of turnover in five years increase turnover by 20% through non-organic growth in the next five years.

The Big Challenge theme was continued by guest speaker Jamie Andrew, mountaineer and quadruple amputee.

In January 1999, trapped for five nights on a tiny ledge high in the French Alps at the mercy of a ferocious storm, Jamie survived hypothermia and severe frostbite but lost his climbing partner and his hands and feet.

Jamie spoke movingly about how he faced up to the biggest challenge of his life. By setting himself a series of often tiny goals - brushing his own teeth, putting on his own clothes - Jamie relearned how to do everyday tasks, re-establishing his independence and self-esteem. He learned how to walk on his prosthetic legs in just three-and-a-half months, enabling him to leave hospital and return to his own flat - having to manage flights of stairs in the doing. He returned to full-time employment, married his girlfriend and started a family. All inspirational stuff. His story about changing his daughter's nappy with his teeth was, perhaps, less aspirational.

His return to a sporting life was by similar tiny incremental steps - first running 20 metres, then 40, then 100. Then the London Marathon where he raised over £22,000 for charity.

Getting back to the mountains started by climbing Edinburgh's Blackford Hill, has included Ben Nevis, the Cuillin ridge and a return to the French Alps to climb with some of the doctors and nurses who first treated him after his rescue. Together with three other disabled mountaineers, Jamie took part in an all-disabled ascent of Kilimanjaro and has even gone back to ice climbing, aided by the first prosthetic ice axes provided under the NHS.

Jamie's latest accomplishment is polishing his skills as a juggler, using his new prosthetic juggling hands - a skill that should prove invaluable given the arrival of twins just twelve weeks ago.

For further information, contact Paul Leighton, Publicity & Communication Officer, telephone: 0131 317 0117, email PaulL@mbha.org.uk at Margaret Blackwood Housing Association.

22 August 2006

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