Christmas Puppies for Bright World Guardianships Local Coordinator

A big congratulations is in order for Coco Binfield, the very friendly chocolate Labrador that belongs to our Local Coordinator for Kent, Jenny Binfield and her family.

Coco has been very clever and given birth to six lovely puppies. All of them are chocolate coloured like her apart from one who is a lovely golden colour.

Jenny and her family will have their work cut out for them over Christmas!

Congratulations to you all from all of us at Bright World Guardianships. Jenny is not only our Local Coordinator but one of our best host families for our guardianship students.

Pre-Christmas Local Coordinators Meeting, South

from front clockwise: Fiona Walters, Jane Forester, Adele Thurlow Reed, Carol Gill, Sian Delaney, Linda Genge, Tracey Welding, Bridget Phillips and Martyn Pape

Yesterday, 26th November was the day for our first group meeting of our Local Coordinators in the South for the academic year 2009/10.

Martyn Pape Dorset, Somerset, Tracey Welding, London and East Surrey, Bridget Phillips, West Sussex, Sian Delaney, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxford who are all establised Bright World Buddies, along with the Head Office team all welcomed our new Local Coordinator for Devon, Linda Genge.

We see our group meetings as an excellent way of sharing information and talking about our service and students. We are always looking at ways of improving our service to our students and their parents as well as developing closer links with schools.

The picture shows us enjoying a slap up lunch after the meeting.

Local Coordinator's Summer Meeting

The Bright World Guardianships Head Office and Local Coordinator Team June 2009

At the end of June each year once all our students are safely on their way home or just about to leave, the Bright World Guardianships team, in its entirety, get together for a review of the year past.


This helps us to review how we are doing things together and makes us all feel much more part of a team.

This year was the busiest year yet with over 20 of us at the meeting. We were welcoming several new members of the team for the first time:

• Ellie Wood, Local Coordintator for Yorkshire


• Astrid Martin, Local Coordinator for Hertfordshire


• Sandra Clarke, Local Coordinator for Essex
  

We all agreed that the year has been very successful with very few problems. We all enjoyed a buffet lunch afterwards before heading home for a long summer ahead.

First Term News

The gap in our blogs shows just how busy the Bright World Team has been since the start of term. I can hardly believe that all students arrived well over a month ago and already they are on half term this week and next, all safely with their host families or going home to see their families back home.

We are already making plans for all of our students' return at Christmas. Sometimes I think that people don't think there is much to this guardianship job but I can tell you that Jane, Carol and I have been flat out here in the office taking care of our guardianship programme and students.

In addition to that our Local Coordinators have been busy visiting all the students and are now poised to visit them all at half term where they are in new host families.

We do, however, feel that what we do is worthwhile as we have had some lovely comments from our students, parents and our overseas agents as to what a great job we are doing so although it is a hard and challenging job it is a very rewarding one.