CHAIR'S REPORT 2009/2010

ACAMH North East Branch Annual General Meeting: 2 June 2010
Darwin Suite, Centre for Life, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 4EP; commencing at 1.00pm





The sell-out success of ACAMH North East's April conference on Psychological Therapies, with Dr Trian Fundudis as both the focus of the day and its keynote presenter, was always going to be difficult to follow. And so it transpired to be .. almost a whole twelve months before the branch was able to "woo and wow" audiences again with a timely conference on a topic recently the subject of much media attention - infant mental health - its importance in terms of future development and its contribution to youth and adult mental stability. Bringing together expert, experienced and recognised presenters, the sessions highlighted this relationship between family, community, educational and environmental factors and the growing infant brain and drew out the most salient markers in terms of developmental issues, impacts, longer-term consequences and prevention strategies. Branch members and the CAMH community were not, however, deprived of local resources during this period. Complimentary attendance at the co-hosted University of Newcastle's academic seminar series continued throughout the year and treated attendees to a diverse range of multi-disciplinary topics, which expertly combined modern with traditional approaches, emerging with established techniques, innovative with integrated interventions, and newly-identified with expertly-mastered disorders - an excellent and valuable resource, offering access to up-to-date developments, networking opportunities and wide-ranging information. The much- anticipated and looked-forward-to joint North East and Yorkshire Branch day conference on "Suicide and Self Harm: Strategies in Prevention and Intervention", part of the prestigious Lionel Hersov Annual Speaker initiative, needed very unfortunately to be postponed due to sudden develops in the US which prevented the speaker - the eminent and very popular Professor David Shaffer - from attending. However disappointing this was, it did leave the Committee and its Members with the promise of a great day in June 2010, focusing on a very important topic. Looking back over the year, the successes of the conferences hosted more than compensates for the relatively quiet calendar and I would like to give thanks to our committee members, who have worked tirelessly to engage the best speakers, offer events which are popular, relevant and attractive to the many different disciplines engaged in child and adolescent mental health and of course, to our valuable ACAMH administrators.


Dr David Ward


For all enquiries please contact Karyn Ambridge
Karyn.Ambridge@acamh.org.uk