Board meeting summary - June 2017

Kia ora, I am the NZSL Board Deputy Chair, Shona Jones. My role is to support the Chair of the NZSL Board, Victoria Manning, and it is my pleasure to present my first summary of the NZSL Board’s third meeting of 2017. 

The main purpose of the 19 and 20 June meeting was to review the draft strategic plan. The NZSL Board identified some further planning ideas, including ideas gathered from the Māori Deaf Hui that took place in Whangarei over Queens Birthday weekend. The NZSL Board made a funding contribution towards this and these ideas were discussed part of the NZSL Board’s strategic planning review work at this meeting.

The strategic plan will undergo more work with the aim to finalise the plan by the end of September 2017. This will then be submitted to the Minister for Disability Issues for approval in October. Once the strategic plan has been agreed to, it will be publically released.

The NZSL Board also received a final report from the Ministry of Health on a project about parents with deaf children having access to the range of information from Health providers including NZSL was submitted. The Ministry of Health has made recommendations for NZSL ideas to be included in the NZSL Board’s strategic plan. The NZSL Board is considering their recommendations, and will make a decision at the next NZSL Board meeting.  

It was also agreed to set up a finance sub-committee made up of three NZSL Board members. The purpose of this committee is to ensure financial business continuity in between NZSL Board meetings, by providing guidance on finance matters when needed by the Office for Disability Issues.

The NZSL Board has a two day meeting coming up on 25 and 26 September, and we look forward to providing a further update on our strategy planning work in October.