Tēnā koutou katoa

This past month has been a busy one for all of us and I expect you will be looking forward to the term break. The brevity of this update owes more to the fact that things have been so busy that the deadline has snuck up on me. We are continuing to address many of the issues that are of importance to Regions and Centres such as education and funding and we look forward to updating you on what we are putting in place.

I am pleased that we have been able to secure an alternative source of funding for Centres in light of the changes to the Community Organisation Grants Scheme. More information on the process is provided in this bulletin.

We are also working on finding ways to alleviate the impact of the changes to education and licencing and I appreciate the number of Centres and Clusters who have communicated with the Trustee Board and myself about this. We have taken your suggestions on board and we are actively working on this. It will take time and ongoing negotiation with a number of agencies as well as thinking of better and different ways of meeting our obligations. As we are able to provide more concrete solutions we will advise you of these but we will need your patience as we work to address the concerns raised.
As advised in the last bulletin we have requested an extension from the Ministry of Education which will mean that the new licencing requirements will not come into effect until at least 2022 giving Centres more time to meet the requirements. We have provided additional information to the Ministry that they requested and we are now waiting on confirmation of the extension. We will advise as soon as this occurs.
I am pleased to advise that we now have all the required documentation to complete the amalgamation with 100% support to proceed from those Associations and Centres that are part of the agreement to amalgamate. We are now just waiting on the High Court date to be confirmed and we will send out a message to everyone once this is completed. Thank you again for all your patience, hard work and willingness to see the process through.

I look forward to sharing more updates as we make progress with Education and other issues.

Ka kite anō au i a koutou.

 

Sean McKinley