Reflections on NAVSH Annual Conference 2024
It was another successful NAVSH conference for Welfare Call this year, and we were very proud to be part of NAVSH’s 10 year anniversary celebration. Over the course of the two days, it was not only lovely to see and to speak to some familiar faces in person for a change, but there was also lots of new faces and authorities we spoke to who have shown interest in the services Welfare Call can provide. Authorities such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Coventry, Walsall, Hull, Anglesey, Wokingham, Slough and Nottinghamshire – we hope to be speaking to them all again in the coming months.
Our themes this year were based around not only the fantastic feedback we received from our authorities during the webinars we conducted in January and February, where 100% of you felt you were supported by Welfare Call, we were high quality and value for money, and that you valued our responsiveness and agility when it came to developing products and services, but we also promoted our very own API that’s in development, our existing relationship with Wonde that we’ve had for over 4 years (allowing Welfare Call to collect attendance via extraction), as well as some Virtual Schools now using Welfare Call’s Extranet as it’s very own personal case management system.
Conversations were constantly flowing over the two days and there were over 80 delegates who filled in our feedback forms which automatically entitled them to be entered into our prize draw where the winner was in for a chance of taking £50 worth of chocolatey Lindt goodies away with them.
Thanks to Suzanne Parrott (Virtual Head for Achieving for Children) who kindly conducted the draw for us, and it was Mary Palin (VH) from Sefton Council who was the lucky winner. We’ll be delivering and presenting the prize to Mary shortly.
It was widely felt across both exhibitors and Virtual School teams alike, that this year’s location in Birmingham was a little too small, and delegates felt a little detracted from the exhibitors with the main event being held upstairs whilst the exhibitors were based on the ground floor, this will no doubt be fed back to the event organisers.
Welfare Call also had some very meaningful conversations with other exhibitors too, and we felt that Virtual School teams would also benefit from having them attend our very own annual forum that we’re looking to reinstate and hold in 2025. Watch this space!