Annual Campaign Conference celebrates incredible volunteers

Passionate campaigners across England came together on 29 June to celebrate our successes from the past year and plan our next national campaign. 

Over Zoom, we were welcomed by Parkinson’s UK CEO Caroline Rassell.

Then we heard from our fantastic campaigners:

• Peter Miller shared his campaign to get Parkinson’s care on the map in Buckinghamshire. 
• Dr Jonny Acheson talked about his brilliant work with medical professionals with Parkinson’s. He also shared his work with other Parkinson’s professionals to encourage hospital trusts and boards across the UK to commit to making changes to make sure patients get their medication on time in hospital.
• Nurse Tincy Binu spoke about her experience of encouraging the hospital she works in to make improvements around care for people with Parkinson’s. 
• Vivienne Goldstein shared details of the Parkinson’s LifeRaft podcast that profiles interesting stories and experiences from across our community. Find out more about the podcast on the Parkinson's LifeRaft website.
• Charlie Straw outlined how following last year’s campaigner conference he was motivated to contact local social care providers in Warwickshire. His campaign encouraged staff to take up training to improve Parkinson’s care. Charlie's work has inspired more campaigners across England to do the same. 

Grace Ogden, Campaigns Engagement Lead at Parkinson's UK, said:

"I knew we had a community of wonderful people at Parkinson’s UK, but hearing from our campaigners about the work they did this past year was more than inspiring, it was motivating. I hope everyone who hears their stories feels driven to get involved."

In the second half of the conference, members of the Policy and Campaigns team led a session on our latest campaign ‘Can’t Wait’. 

Can't Wait is our campaign that focuses on influencing the new Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in England to improve care for people with Parkinson's. This includes:

• access to the relevant health professional when they need it
• making sure that Parkinson's symptoms and medication needs are understood across hospitals and other clinical settings.

We want to target the newly established ICSs in England to make sure they understand Parkinson’s.

This month we’ll be writing to these new ICSs to share some information about the condition and the support we can provide to improve services, along with resources we have. 

Later this month we’ll share our campaign pack, so you can get in touch with your ICS.

It'll have all the information and tools you need to make contact with your ICS and ensure they understand Parkinson's and also have the right workforce in place, to make sure people with Parkinson’s get the care they need.