September 2021 Newsletter

Dear All

Hope you are enjoying the little bits of sun we have had so far this summer.  

The first thing I need to do is remind you all about our Zoom meeting next Tuesday, 7th September at 7 pm as usual. This month Alex Berry from DUK will be talking to us about mindfulness and taking us through a guided session. This is how she describes the session she has planned for us 

Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and the world around you, focusing on the present moment rather than worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. In this session, we’ll be exploring a bit of the theory of mindfulness but will be spending most of the time going through a variety of mindfulness techniques and ways of relaxing.

I did take part in a similar session Alex did for DUK and it was very good so I hope as many of you as possible can attend. I will send out the joining details later this week.

Richard Allan will be presenting in October in his new position as a Healthwatch Kingston trustee. Healthwatch Kingston monitors the quality of NHS provision in the borough and wants to run a survey into local diabetic care. The first part of this will be an online questionnaire that I will send out to you all and it will also be available on the Healthwatch Kingston website. If possible please complete this before the meeting itself which will be a focus group discussion on local diabetic care led by Richard. With your permission Richard will be recording this discussion so that anonymized parts of it can be included in a final Healthwatch Kingston report to GPs surgeries, Kingston Hospital, Kingston Council and others in time for publication by the first weeks of 2022. This is a real opportunity to have your voice heard so I hope many of you will participate.

The last thing I want to remind you all about is our Facebook Group, "Diabetes UK Kingston Group". It is a public group so anyone who uses Facebook can read the posts and contents and anyone interested in Diabetes can request to become a member and post content and comments and invite new members that we might not otherwise reach. A Facebook Group rather than a page is designed to promote communications between members and groups in a specific area and with common interests.  Our group administrators can monitor who can become members, promote our events, and monitor the contents of the messages being exchanged. This way we can share and learn from one another, get important updates of our events, and get honest feedback, thus growing interest amongst our local community and,  growing membership organically.  We encourage all our members to participate in this FB Group, especially those who have a FB profile. If you do not have one, then you can request members of your family or friends to do the same. You can add comments of your views on our meetings, and other events.  The more you participate and advocate, the better. Please contact Pravin or me if you need help joining the group.

I look forward to seeing many of you next week.

Best wishes,

Anne Lewis-Lloyd

DUK Kingston Chair