We had 14 members today. Lisa welcomed everyone and also welcomed Mike Rich – CEO of Barnet Carers who joined us this evening to talk about the forum we are aiming to set up with Barnet Council.

Mike could only stay for half an hour as he had another meeting to attend. He did however explain the importance of what we were trying to achieve to allow Visiting in Care Homes. Mike informed everyone that if they were able to attend the forum to show support this would be helpful. Just before Mike was leaving, Lisa also asked about carers letters as this was something previously discussed by members as a great need. Mike very kindly informed everyone that he would be happy to provide carers letters to anyone that needed one. Lisa thanked Mike and said that she would be emailing members with regards both matters and letting Mike know.

We also had another visitor this evening – Sharon Tynan from Age UK London who spoke about the importance of having a Flu vaccine. This was an introduction from one of our members Maurice. Sharon was pleased to hear that everyone in the meeting had their flu vaccines. She did explain to us in great detail however the myths about flu vaccines which was very interesting to hear. Thank you Sharon.

Our meeting then carried on as usual to discuss other matters. Lisa informed everyone that she has decided to extend the meeting to 8.30pm and this was decided because in previous discussions it was suggested if another carers meeting could be set up at later times. Everyone was happy with Lisa’s decision. It was also discussed and suggested to set up another chat group in our meeting to enable 2 or three people to have a chat in a smaller group and talk about like-minded issues.

Everyone was happy to give it a try and Mark our technical assistant tried as an experiment to take two of the members out of the meeting which worked. Everyone decided that perhaps we could give this a go next week.

Another member mentioned he has heard that there may be suppliers that offer free central heating and heating upgrades for people that receive attendance allowance and therefore it is worth doing a google search on ECO3 and also enquire with the Council. As usual this was a very interesting and informative meeting