Message from our Chair of Trustees

As a board of trustees, we believe in being transparent in our thoughts and actions.  We appreciate the significant responsibilities we have to always act in the best interests of our beneficiaries, whilst recognising we could not do this without the support and dedication of our staff team, partners, volunteers and stakeholders.  At our board meeting in September 2022, we agreed, in the spirit of openness, that I will post a short message after our quarterly board meeting summarising our key actions and decisions.

Esther Sadler-Williams, Chair of Trustees at Pharmacist Support

Message from the Chair – June 2025

The Board reviewed our terms of reference for sub-committees and also the membership of our Bursary panel.  We agreed that involving a trainee in the Bursary process would be helpful as they would have recent experience of the hardship faced by students.

The announcement by the RPS that it wishes to become a Royal College was discussed in depth, as the proposed objects of the new charter appear to be in direct competition to our own.  The Chair and the CE had had several email exchanges and an online meeting with the Chief Executive and President of the RPS and thus updated the Board accordingly.  The RPS responses were reassuring, as they stated that they plan to deliver the benevolence objective via the charity. However, this proposed change remains a significant risk on our risk register and any future agreement /partnership with the new Royal College would have to be robust and services supplied funded appropriately.

We had a face-to-face update from our investment manager which was helpful to understand performance against benchmark of our portfolio, as well as their thoughts around the investment outlook.

In the future several Trustees will be delivering talks to the staff team on various subjects around the pharmacy landscape that are of topical interest. Also, during future Board meetings we are looking forward to hearing directly from beneficiaries of our services.

Message from the Chair – December 2024

The Board was delighted to formally appoint Raj Nutan and Leah Davies as new trustees, and it was with a heavy heart that we formally said goodbye to Karen Harrowing who was leaving the Board.  During her term with us, Karen brought many new perspectives to the way we work, and her skills will be solely missed.  Esther Sadler-Williams was confirmed at Chair of Trustees for a further year and Mark Sweeney was confirmed as Vice Chair. We also welcomed as an observer our new Finance and Operations Director, Sarah Crawford, who will formally join the charity staff team in early February.

Our budget for 2025 was approved which will underpin the first year of our new 5-year strategy.  During the first few months of 2025 we will define appropriate measures to monitor the progress of this new strategy.  The staff team were also congratulated on winning two awards: Cultural Pioneer Wellbeing award and Charity Learning Consortium (CLC) award for Excellence in Workforce Wellbeing, for our Embracing a Workplace Wellbeing Culture course.  The first award was particularly gratifying as we were up against some very big organisations in the UK, United States, and other countries.

The Trustees and staff had assembled a significant donation for the Manchester South Central Foodbank; a charity that our finance manager, Gill Darling, had been a founder member of as well as a trustee.  It was agreed this was a great way to remember Gill as the year came to an end.

Message from the Chair – September 2024

The Board was delighted to welcome, Raj Nutan and Leah Davies who will be formally appointed as trustees in December.  They both bring valuable experience which will augment our team.

We review our reserves policy annually, and some changes were made to identify appropriate ‘trigger’ levels for action, which will increase in line with inflation.  Following on from our extensive review of the grants policy, the team have reviewed our bursary scheme and, whilst not changing the value of the awards, they had suggested some significant improvements to the process.  These included improving the language around purpose, as well as including clearer questions for the applicant and simplifying the university endorsement.

The staff team had worked hard following our strategy planning day in June and the Board were delighted to be able to review the initial outline of the new 5-year strategy.  This will be further refined over the coming weeks and months.

Message from the Chair – June 2024

Prior to our meeting we devoted a day to defining priorities for our next five-year strategy.  This was an opportunity to congratulate the team on their achievements over the last cycle, and consider actions which will build on the strong foundations already established  These actions will include identifying ways to utilise technology to make life easier for our beneficiaries as well as our staff.

At the outset of our Board  meeting, we acknowledged the incredible contribution made to the charity by our late Finance Manager, Gill Darling, who sadly passed away in early May.  She will be sorely missed by everyone but will be forever in our hearts. The Board agreed that until the new strategy is fully defined, we would pause with recruiting Gill’s replacement in case modification to the role description may be required.  Crowe have agreed to provide support in the interim.

We approved our year end accounts, audit report and Impact Report.  In addition, there were several new policies to approve including a donations policy which will be reviewed after 6 months to ensure that the process works effectively.

An update was provided on the Trustee recruitment process which has generated several strong candidates despite not using ‘traditional’ recruitment sources.  Interviews are scheduled over the next month.

The Board updated its position statement in relation to pharmacy technicians:

Position statement on Pharmacy Technicians –  June 2024

As a charity it remains our purpose to support our pharmacy family in perpetuity, as well as continuing to evolve to remain relevant.

Following a recent periodic review of our Articles of Association, to ensure that they remain fit for the future, some changes were submitted and accepted by the Charity Commission. Included in these edits was an addition, which would enable us to support additional beneficiary groups in the future.  We have specified that such an addition, if it were to be invoked, would be limited to individuals who are current registrants on a register held by the GPhC.

No actual changes to what we do or who we help are happening now. However, as part of our strategic review, and in context of other work, the charity is now able to initiate conversations with potential funders and partners, and with their support, the charity now has the flexibility to expand our offering to some other registrants in the future, if it is appropriate to do so.

Message from the Chair – March 2024

We reviewed our year end accounts which were broadly in line with budget; extra support had been provided in some areas around counselling, addiction support and grants provision, but the Board agreed that we must continue to provide for our beneficiaries even when demand is greater than we predicted. Our investment manager attended to present an update on our portfolio, and we were particularly pleased that following our divestment from fossil fuel producers, our ESG credentials have improved significantly, even performing better than benchmark.

Following a detailed evaluation, the Board agreed to change banking provider, the new provider offering reduced charges/better interest, as well as better customer satisfaction ratings, branch availability and ESG credentials.  Planning for the compilation of our annual report was discussed to enable sign off at the June Board meeting and 2 new policies were approved.

We continue to explore extending our beneficiary pool to potentially include Pharmacy Technicians.  Following the discussion with our legal advisor and feedback from stakeholders, we have undertaken discussions with staff and completed some initial modelling.  All this data will be fed into our overall risk analysis.

Message from the Chair – December 2023

The following is a short summary after our December 23 Board meeting summarising some of our key actions and decisions.

Two key documents were approved: the 2024 budget and the updated grants policy.  The updated grants policy was the result of considerable efforts by the staff team and trustees to ensure that our financial assistance scheme met the changing needs of our beneficiaries and importantly it identified some new areas where we could provide some additional support.

The Board were treated to a presentation on wellbeing by two staff members Melissa Cochrane and Riven Seamarks  and highlighted the new training offering for pharmacy leaders ‘Embracing a Workplace Wellbeing Culture’.  This is an incredible and very carefully thought-out piece of work which should really support our aspiring pharmacy managers of tomorrow.

We continue to explore extending our beneficiary pool to potentially include Pharmacy Technicians.  To support our decision making we had a valuable session with our legal advisor where we reviewed changes that would be required to our articles, as well as other potential legal ramifications should this change go ahead.

The staff team were congratulated on a fantastic year, and we wished everyone a successful move to the new office as well as a Merry Christmas.  Finally, we said a fond farewell to two valued trustees Anita Cawley and Paul Johnson who were thanked for their years of dedicated service to the charity.

Message from the Chair – September 2023

The following is a short summary after our September 23 Board meeting summarising some of our key actions and decisions.

As we will be losing two Trustees at the end of the year, the Board elected a new Vice Chair/Chair of our Staffing and Remuneration Sub-committee (Mark Sweeney) as well as a new chair of our Finance Sub-committee (David Downham) who will take up their roles in December. In addition, we agreed that it would be prudent to begin a Trustee recruitment process in early 2024 and the recently revised Trustee Skills audit process would support this important work.  We also discussed the role of non-trustee members of Sub-committees and considered if a ‘Key Ambassador’ would help further the Charity’s aims.  This will be debated further in our December Meeting.

The Grants Working Group had completed their review and a considerable part of the meeting was devoted to reviewing the proposed new Grants Policy.  The goal of this new policy was to ensure that our financial assistance scheme met the changing needs of our beneficiaries, identifying any areas where we may be able to provide any additional support.

The Board noted that the Chair and the Chief Executive are due to have a meeting with the RPS in October to discuss the current ‘donation process’.  Although the Assembly had proposed a £1 per member donation, this had been modified to requesting Members to make a voluntary donation during the renewal process.  To date receipts are very low at around 10% of what had been expected compared to other key donors.  Barriers to the process and alternative approaches will be discussed with the RPS.

Finally, the team were congratulated on being nominated for two awards and securing more cost-effective office space in the local area, which will become the Charity’s new home from November.

Message from the Chair – June 2023

The following is a short summary after our June 23 meetings summarising some of our key actions and decisions.

The initial part of our meeting discussed our strategic focus for the final year of our 5-year plan.  We considered resourcing and some additional ‘quick wins’ to support our fundraising plan which has an ambitious target of raising £1 million in the next five years. We also looked at approaches to ensure that, now we have improved equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) data about our beneficiaries, that future marketing is appropriately targeted and focused on those who we may not be reaching.  Another important topic was to review our action plan, exploring if we should add Pharmacy Technicians to our beneficiary pool.  Prior to starting our stakeholder consultation later this year, we will ensure appropriate legal advice is taken so we fully understand the implications and required actions of any decision we may make.

The Board approved the 2022 Trustee Annual Report and Accounts which is one of our key responsibilities.  The team was recognised for the significant effort required in preparing for the annual audit and for pulling together an excellent document.  In addition, a number of HR policies as well as the investment policy were up for review and were approved subject to some minor modifications.

Sarah Frangos, Senior Marketing Comms and Partnerships officer provided the Trustees with an excellent presentation on ‘Partnerships’ including upcoming plans.  In future we hope that other members of the staff team will similarly join and provide ‘spotlights’ to give our Board a more detailed insight into important topics that the charity is managing.

Message from the Chair – March 2023

The following is a short summary after our March 23 Board meeting summarising some of our key actions and decisions.

The Board agreed the format for the Trustee Annual report which will be issued in June.   Prior to agreeing an update to our investment policy, we were provided with a review of the market from our Investment Managers; the last year has been difficult, but our portfolio is performing similarly to other charities, and overall it is delivering well over time.   From an ESG perspective it was pleasing to learn that our investments are scoring highly in terms of sustainability and carbon footprint indicators. The impact of the recently published report from the UK Commission on ‘Pharmacy Professional Leadership’ was discussed in regard to our exploration of the possibility of including Pharmacy technicians within our pharmacy family. Whilst we continue this process, we agreed to re-align our timeline so that any approach by the prospective Pharmacy Leadership Council can be considered along with our wider engagement.

Plans for our fundraising strategy were reviewed and we are considering ways that we can ‘celebrate success’ with our donors and partners. There has been a significant increase in the uptake of our counselling service, and we agreed a way forward to enable us to deliver this valuable service within our budget constraints.  The Board agreed the Office Working group should progress with the option of securing a smaller dedicated office space since fewer staff are in the office on a day-to-day basis.  Finally, we celebrated the fact that Pharmacist Support will be 182 in April!

The Board also updated its position statement in relation to pharmacy technicians:

Position statement on Pharmacy Technicians –  March 23

As a charity, it remains our purpose to support “our pharmacy family” in perpetuity, as well as continuing to evolve to remain relevant.

We had been increasingly asked to consider supporting Pharmacy Technicians and, as part of our strategic review cycle, we began a process to review options around Pharmacy Technicians potentially becoming part of our beneficiary pool in the future.

In light of the recent publication of the UK Commission’s report, on the future for Pharmacy Professional Leadership, the Board of Pharmacist Support has agreed to re-evaluate our next steps so that the potential impact of the report, including that of the prospective Pharmacy Leadership Council, can be considered.

This statement will continue to be updated as this important initiative progresses and as our understanding of beneficiary need develops.