• Opening Address  - Don McKenzie, Chairman.
• Exciting Challenges Ahead - Sandra Budd, Chief Executive.
• Challenges Facing the Foundation - Gerard Rahman, Chief Financial Officer.
• Lessons from the RNIB - Lesley-Anne Alexander, Chief Executive, RNIB.
  
• Seeing into the Future - Dr Dianne Sharp, Retina Specialists, Parnell.
• You Gotta go with the Flow - Gerard Menses, Chief Executive, Vision Australia.
• Panel Discussion (morning) – Future Trends
  
• Panel discussion (afternoon) and concluding remarks
• Closing Address - Where to from here? Don McKenzie, Chairman and Sandra Budd, Chief Executive

Opening Address  - Don McKenzie, Chairman.

Firstly, a special thanks to our special visitors:

- Gerard Menses, Chief Executive, Vision Australia, and such a moving force to drawing the Trans-Tasman services together.

- Steve Le Grow. The Foundation brought Steve to NZ in 1988 as Chair of Rehabilitation studies, which was a groundbreaking thing for the Foundation at the time.

- Dr Dianne Sharp. Friend of the Foundation, clients and non-clients.

- Karen Stobbs. Part of the Senior Management Team for Blind and Low Vision Education Services (BLENNZ).

 
Today is about catching ideas – a venus trap focusing on the survival of the Foundation in the future.  Survival of the fittest is one of nature’s laws.  Today is about drawing out the Foundation’s fitness to survive in a competitive world.

Thank you to Bayleys for the use of the premises for the 2020 workshop.  Bayleys is a major supporter of the Guide Dog Services.

Thanks to Sandra Budd, Gerard Rahman and Ruth Bijl for today’s vision.  Their vision made today possible. Thank you for bringing about the idea and getting everyone all together.  Today will be something quite significant in planning the Foundation’s future.

 
A few things to think about as we contemplate the Foundation’s future today are:

1. Progress on vision related services in general and blind and partially-sighted services in particular lies on finding common ground.  If we don’t find common ground, if we don’t agree about what is important and we don’t articulate our vision, no-one else will.  We have to set the pace.   Julius Caesar said, “The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but it is ourselves that we are underlings”.  What he is saying is that ‘united we stand, but divided we fall’.  We have to articulate what we are here for and advocate for it.
2. Technology is shaping our future – both in terms of blind and partially sighted people being able to access information and education, but also in organizations being able to be more productive.
3. We must hold dear to the general consumer values, principles and standards that relate to vision needs. And therein lies our particular uniqueness.  This is not easy given the nature of our constituency, right through the age span.  The resources we amass have to be continually realigned to meeting those needs.  Let’s remember that we are all different. Forty percent of New Zealand children entering school today are Māori, Pacifica or Asian.  Fifty-five percent of all children born today are Māori, Pacifica or Asian.  How much do we truly know about the lives of the population we are here to serve?  How well do we take into account what the rest of the world thinks about blindness, and partial sightedness?
4. We can’t escape the real drive for quality assurance, nor should we.  That means having systems and procedures in place that are effective, efficient, dynamic, accountable and transparent.  We need to be always on the improve.
5. We are going to be the better if we work in a climate where creativity and innovation is relished.  The freedom to have creative solutions to individual challenges.
6. All of this has to be underpinned by an organization that is flexible and adaptable.  Nature’s law – survival in the first place, adaptability in the second place.
7. We are in the people business, that’s about sharing knowledge, skills, attitudes, values all with a ‘team theme’. 

Coming to terms with and living with sight loss is no small challenge.  There is life after “bugger” and that’s the challenge. That’s our job.

The Foundation has successfully met major challenges head on.  We are all here on this particularly journey together.  They key objective is to offer the next generation the same life chances we currently enjoy.  We can do this but need to apply ourselves.

Society is the greater when old people plant trees in whose shade they will never rest.  I want to get cracking on planting those trees.  Let’s go for it!

Exciting Challenges Ahead - Sandra Budd, Chief Executive.

 
What Don just said is truly inspirational.  He always shares so much wisdom and he has given us some very clear messages to start out our journey today.

Today is truly a watershed event, we have an opportunity to make a true contribution to make a difference in the next generation of the blindness community.  What we do today will affect the future direction and sustainability of this organization and I find this tremendously exciting. 

Sustainability is more than a buzz word, it is at the heart of everything we do, think and say from this day forward.  An organization like the Foundation, whose roots stretch back to 1890, cannot keep doing things the same way year in and year out.  As Alfred Pearlman said in 1957, “After you’ve done the same thing for two years, look over it carefully, after five years look at it with suspicion, after ten years throw it away and start it all over”.

 In trying to get my head around the year 2020, I went back 12 years.  I remembered carrying around with me that brick of a cell phone. Occasionally I sent an email and I don’t remember ever surfing the internet.  Today all these things are as critical to my work as the air I breathe.  Imagining the changes we will see by 2020 fills me with excitement.  Consider the opportunities, and consider the challenges. 

 Dianne Sharp is going to be just one of the people to talk to us about the medical advances.

Planning for the future can be really daunting if we are alone in our waka. But we are not. We are all in the Foundation’s waka with our members, staff, consumer organizations, community committees, volunteers and a passionate bunch of stakeholders. 

We have been the Foundation of the Blind for five years now.  Consultation and transparency are at the heart of who we are and how we will go forward together.  In fact that is one of the main reasons I was interested in joining the Foundation.

 The Foundation has done a huge amount of consultation with members and stakeholders, especially over the last two years as part of the planning cycle.  What is different about today is that we are now looking to a different horizon, not just a few years, we are looking forward to sustainability in 2020.

 I had the pleasure of meeting Lesley-Anne Alexander, Chief Executive of RNIB and Gerard Menses, Chief Executive of Vision Australia recently.  I am indebted to them for sharing their views on sustainability and change today.  Their comments will reinforce a very wise saying that “the only constant in life is change”. 

In my 35 career in health, here and in Australia, I learnt the only way to manage the future is to control your own future.  If you don’t manage change, it will manage you. 

I love this quote, “it is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory”.  

Survival of the Foundation IS mandatory, so we must change.  We need to be adaptable, innovative and flexible amongst other things.  Change and innovation is ingrained in the Foundation’s DNA.  The organization has been an innovator for a very long time, but change is never easy or smooth.  Joan Scott said, “Those who expect moments of change to be easy and free of conflict, have not learnt their history”.

We will soon hear from Gerard Rahman, but first I want to steal some of his facts:

- The population of New Zealand is ageing.

- Costs are rising faster than our income.

- The Foundation will be in the red in two years if we don’t do something.

- We will have gone through our cash reserves by 2020 if we don’t.

 
We must be here for future generations and we must change. We have a window of opportunity to plan for change.  I am pleased to lead an organization that faces challenges head on and turns, anticipating emerging threats and opportunities, turning them to its advantage.  I want to lead an organization that is transparent and faithful with its members, consumer organizations and other stakeholders. To create the future we all want.  It starts today!

 

Challenges Facing the Foundation - Gerard Rahman, Chief Financial Officer.

 
We are here to gather emerging themes, gather information about what the future holds and think of some keys for 2020.  Briar Harland, is going to help us do that.

I’m going to talk about us.  I’ve been an accountant for more than 20 years, so I think about money a lot.  Some people have said to me, if that’s what I think about then I shouldn’t have come to the Foundation.  That person was Ruth.  Well I don’t agree! The Foundation is brilliant. Staff, volunteers and members do brilliant things everyday.  I want to be part of that. 

Like any organization, to do what the Foundation does takes money and lots of it.  So I’ve been thinking about money; our income and how we spend it. 

The Foundation’s income comes through three major sources:
 

1. Government contracts
2. Donations
3. Legacies.

 
We spend more than half our income on staff salaries.  We spend the other half supporting the delivery of services.  And every year we struggle just to balance our books.  So I’ve been asking myself, will it be easier or harder to balance the Foundation’s books over the next three to four years and even the next twelve years? 

To answer that I started thinking about how the way we earn and spend changes over time.  I delved into the past and this is what I found. 

Government contracts increase with inflation, and at present provide $7 million per annum.  That’s about one third of our $23 million annual cost of providing services to members.  Sometimes we do better than planned in public donations but, over time, despite having the best fundraisers in the country, we find that donations rise no more than inflation.  The other money we receive from the public is through legacies. 

Legacies are volatile. Some years up and some years down.  There are so many factors with legacies that we cannot rely on income from legacies.  I’m worried about legacies.  One of the factors that makes me worried is reverse mortgages, when people borrow against their assets, like their house, to support retirement lifestyle. 

What this means is that any inheritance they leave behind for their children, or for legacies to places like the Foundation, is already used before someone passes away.  This is said to be the trend for the baby boom generation – those who are just about to hit retirement.  This will take a huge hit out of any legacies and will start to hit the Foundation as early as the next few years.  That’s why I’m worried about our income.  At best, it appears that it will keep pace with inflation.  At worst, legacies will decline. 

So what about our expenditure?

Our general costs, broadly increase in line with inflation.  That is a bit less than half of our expenditure.  The remainder goes on staff.  The shortage of staff is now a global trend. Everything points to this getting worse.  This means it’s harder to attract and keep the type of staff we need.  To counteract this, employers who can afford to, increase the wages of skilled staff. The rest of us have to try and keep up the best we can and we have been struggling with this recently.

The general trend in terms of the skilled workforce, is that there is a pressure for wages to increase at a faster rate than inflation.  In terms of expenditure, half of our expenditure can increase at a faster rate than we can expect our income to increase, even if legacy income remains stable.

So what does this mean?

It shows a widening gap, if we worked out the difference between income and expenditure the gap would increase to $10m every year by 2020.  If we carry on doing what we do now, in the way that we do it, by 2012 this gap between income and expenditure would be up to $2m per annum.

To do what is right for the Foundation, we need to avoid knee jerk reactions that provide quick responses that hurt our future.  To do this well, we need to plan for change now.  In a nutshell, if we carry on doing what we do without change, we will run out of money.  Without change there will be nothing left. 

Change. If I could provide one message about change, it would be about direction. Not efficiency, not speed, not deck chairs.  As we work together over the next few months think “iceberg”.  That is why today’s opportunity is so brilliant, we can start on our path towards sustainability.

Lessons from the RNIB - Lesley-Anne Alexander, Chief Executive, RNIB.

Pre-recorded footage shown at the workshop

What was the situation you found [at the RNIB]?

It was fantastic coming to an organization that was a household name and that has huge respect from the British people.  Underneath, RNIB was facing struggles and sustainability was in jeopardy.  There was no way we were going to have to pack up, but the number and level of services we were able to deliver was going to diminish. 

For a number of years leading up to that time, we had spent more money than we had actually made.  Our sustainability into the future was really in question.  Our challenge was how do we cut back on what we are doing, but not damage the services we were providing? 

Staff of RNIB knew that things had to change. There was an absolute realization in the organization that we couldn’t continue in the way we had been going in previous years.  Of course it was very difficult.  Even when people accepted and understood that there needed to be a change, there was a bit of scepticism, and a bit of a feeling that everyone else needed to change, but not themselves.  But what people knew and what we realized in our hearts was that the whole organization had to change. 

What stakeholders saw was a reduction in the number of services we delivered and it was so important that our stakeholders knew why that was happening.  We developed a consultation process, we did small groups with people, scenario planning, spoke to RNIB members (and we have a very specific definition of membership). We made sure we listened and people knew we were listening. 

We were very clear that we couldn’t satisfy everyone. In fact it was interesting that the more we spoke to our stakeholders, the more they asked us to do more things for them and we had to contain their expectations of us. 

Four years on and we have a rosy view of what we have achieved.  It was hard work and difficult along the way and if I hadn’t had had the support of staff, trustees and stakeholders, it wouldn’t have been possible to have changed the organization.  What we have achieved is sustainability long-term. We will be here for another 140 years hopefully.

Where we are now is intriguing.  We are absolutely clear that we have enough money to do the things we want to do.  Clearly we don’t have enough money, no charity I know of does. There are 100 million things I’d love to do that I can’t afford to at the moment but, as we have renewed our efforts at fundraising, we are able to this year start to talk about growing new services and expanding those we already deliver.  The work we have done over the last two to three years has put us on a steady footing and we are now at the point where we’re expanding into the future.  I’m confident the services we provide are safe.  We can now grow them in line with our consumers’ expectations. We really will be a first class organization moving forward. 

I would be thrilled if I knew that the work we had done here at RNIB ensured that no one needlessly lost their sight.  I’m astounded that half of all the sight loss in the UK is preventable.  I can’t believe I’m living in a country where people are going blind unnecessarily. 

My advice to you would be to decide on your vision and go for it.  There will be so many people that will tell you why not to do something, but if you’re determined enough, if you’re clear about what you want to achieve and have a robust business plan to do this, then go for it, and you will make the sustained, long lasting change you want to make.

 

 

Seeing into the Future - Dr Dianne Sharp, Retina Specialists, Parnell.

Thank you. This is a snapshot of the past, present and future. 

Age-related macular degeneration is the greatest cause of blindness in the western society in the over 50 age group.  It is the largest group that is being registered with the RNZFB on an annual basis.

Late diagnosis leads to loss of vision because of scarring. But early diagnosis and recognition can lead to potential treatments.

In 1968, laser coagulation came along. In 1990, scientists showed in studies that we could improve vision loss of six lines or more.  With treatment, only 46% lost 6 lines or more.  That’s huge! Six lines is a change from 6/12 (driving vision) to 6/60 (legal blindness) or 6/6 (legal vision) to 6/24 which is now registered with the Foundation.  But over 50 percent with laser treatment were still losing six lines of vision.

In 2000, photodynamic therapy came along. This was with a photo sensitizing dye which was injected. A non-thermal laser was used which then closed down the blood vessels which leave the overlying normal vessels intact.  That did a little better.  The percentage loosing three lines of vision was 60 percent of people who were being treated with photodynamic therapy and now we could say you could still loose vision with treatment, but you will loose less vision than if you aren’t treated.

From right up until 2006, we had limited treatment options for this major cause of vision loss.  In 2006 a revolutionary treatment came along. This now changed the whole outcome.  For the first time we now had a treatment that had a mean improvement in vision.  This now had a mean gain of one and a half to two lines on the chart, which is a change of four to five lines actually gaining a difference from no treatment to treatment.  It meant than 90 percent were loosing less than three lines and we now had 40 percent of patients gaining three lines in vision. Patients with driving vision about 40% and the number of patients now becoming legally blind (with 6/60 vision) was now down to 15 to 20 percent.  This makes a huge difference.

This is where we have been in the past and what an enormous change has happened in the past two years.  What then of future therapies?  The anti-VEGF therapies will continue to be a mainstay I’m sure with implanted delivery systems to reduce the number of treatments.  We will have cell rescue concepts to stop programmed cell death to slow dry macular degeneration, to slow down changes in retinal dystrophies.  We will have gene therapy and gene cell therapies to replace retinal cells lost or injured.

The implanted delivery systems are already in trials and are being used.   They look like a complicated cell, but in fact they are minute 3 mm long cylindrical implant being placed into the eye using a small gauge injector. 

 

Gene therapy

Lancelot is a stand out study. He’s a dog that was blind from birth and had a defect in the RPG65 gene and this gene is an essential molecule in the visual cycle.  It is also a gene in humans.  Lancelot had his sight restored six years ago by gene therapy and is still seeing.

In 2007, it was found that gene therapy restored visual pathways in animals born blind.  They were actually able to do this with MRI scanning.  This is quite a step forward.  Young adults with RPG65, have the brain pathways and if the eyes start working with gene therapy, these pathways are open so the person can see.

Following from this gene transferred techniques have already entered into Stage 1 clinical trials and a young adult with the RPG65 gene mutation was injected with trillions of replacement genes into the retina.

Stem cell therapies have had a lot of press with the concept of using primitive cells from foetal tissues which has moral and ethical implications.  Now we find stem cells are present even in adults.  This is technology we can now use – the persons own skin can be created to cover severe burns.  Stem cells are extracted from the root of the hair follicle, a modified environment differentiates this tissue between skin tissue and then they are able to make patches of skin that can cover areas of up to 100 sq cm to replace skin.  Cultured cells from the whiskers of mice, have been shown to change into cell types that are associated with the brain. 

It is feasible to believe technology will be able to prevent severe physical impairment, certainly for macular degeneration, for both wet and dry using techniques we have available and future techniques.  It will be able to help with diabetic retinopathy, with retinal vascular diseases, with the inherited retinal dystrophies.  Some forms of blindness may even be reversed. 

But the limitation is going to be health economics, and it is going to require the Government, medical personnel, professional bodies, consumer groups and the RNZFB to work together for education, prevention, early detection to help make available the timely access to treatment for all and also for the rehabilitation and social services. 

If we focus only on the improved care we will be flooded, we need to look upstream, how can we help and lobby groups to make these treatments available, how can we get a larger portion of the health budget, how can we prevent, how can we educate the public?  Today the RNZFB will need to look at how it can stop this great stream. 

 

You Gotta go with the Flow - Gerard Menses, Chief Executive, Vision Australia.

 

I was given the topic, “you gotta go with the flow”, but I’m not very good at doing what I’m told. 

That’s the worst piece of advice I could give you!

If you go with the flow then you’re heading for a waterfall and that’s the worst thing that could happen.  Maybe it was because Ruth talked to some of my staff and they feel like we’re rushing along at the moment.

I want to share with you a conversation of possibility because that’s what I understand you’re starting and that’s what has worked really well for us at Vision Australia.  I’d like to share some of our journey and thoughts, some of which you’ll disagree with and some of which will be interesting and challenging for you.

When I started at Vision Australia, which is a product now of seven organizations coming together, we started off with four and I used to say I was the luckiest person in Australia because I was running the four best blindness organizations in Australia.  I knew this because each one had told me so.  I knew that therefore we had to think differently. 

We started with our vision statement and made sure we got that right, then we thought about what it was that made us achieve it.  Our vision is very similar to yours, our vision is that people who are blind or have low vision can participate in any part of life they choose.  It’s almost as though we have the same scriptwriter across both organizations. 

We’re very excited about our vision, because we believe it’s possible.  It’s one that’s true, often vision statements are unrealistic, but we know that ours is realistic.  While we began thinking about this, we became aware of a debate in part of our organization. 

I don’t know if you know of this debate about whether you’re an organization “of” the blind, or an organization “for” the blind.  It wasn’t an official debate in our organization, because the Board members told me they had made their decision, but different Board members told me a different decision. 

So we really recognized that it was something we had to deal with.  We then made a discovery, that what we really are is a living partnership between people who are blind, partially sighted or have low vision.  This discovery was one of the most exciting things to happen for Vision Australia, because over night that vision almost organically graft itself onto our vision. 

If you ask our staff or stakeholders what the vision is of Vision Australia, they will tell you we are a living partnership between people who are blind, partially sighted or have low vision, united by the passion that people who are blind or have low vision should participate in every part of life they choose.

We have realized that what we have done is that we have created a vision where in our society everyone is equal. The society we want to live in.  Because you are a social change agent. We are a social change agent. 

We are challenging the unnecessary barriers that are stopping participation of people who are blind or have low vision. We are changing society.  So we are modelling the very type of society we want to create.  Everyone in the organization is feeling like an equal partner, respectful of each other and working together to live in the society that we all want to live in and it’s a really exciting and dynamic place. 

The other thing we did to help us achieve the vision, that every blind or low sighted person will participate in every part of life they choose, was to ask the staff to participate in a different way of thinking.  We wanted them to see everything as a solution and not as a problem and we knew that we were asking something really, really hard.   It is hard, because we live in a problem saturated world.  The media is always looking for problems, everyone is looking for problems.  Everything is defined in terms of a problem.

Every human problem has a solution.  It is being offered to you by a creative, powerful person as a solution.  It might not be a solution that works, or a solution to a problem that you’re thinking on, but it will be a solution.

Let me give you an example of solution-focused thinking.  I used to work with young offenders and a lot of the people that I worked with had experienced abuse and now they were really violent towards people. 

If you think back to when you were four or five. A tiny little human being and a big human being is picking on you.  What can you do? You can run away, attract attention or lash out as a last resort.  Fast forward ten years and you’re a delinquent young offender. What’s your behaviour going to be like? Really, it’s lashing out, attention seeking and running away. 

It’s a solution that that young person applied that probably saved their life.  The challenge for that person is that the solution is no longer working.  Once they realise this, they realise how powerful they are and it’s possible to come up with a new, alternative solution. 

Solution-focused thinking is really important.  You’re about to embark on this wonderful journey of change, and all the change experts will come say that you’re going to have resistance, whenever you change resistance is inevitable.  Bullshit! There’s no such thing.  We have to stand up and resist resistance.  Everyone is cooperating as hard as they can. Everyone wants the best possible RNZFB. 

When I used to teach family therapy, I learnt this lesson very well.  We used to teach family therapy by doing role plays.  I’m sure you’ve all done a role play at some stage of your life and at the end of the role play is when the learning takes place.  We were sitting there, with all sorts of psychologists and social workers in the room talking about the other people being resistant.  I said, “Read your behavioural directive”, which was co-operate as hard as you can.  They were gob-smacked, but it made sense.

Staff in organizations like this will cooperate as hard as they can to get the best possible outcome for the clients, which means they will subvert any policy or procedure that the RNZFB puts in place if that will help the client.  Which is exactly the type of staff we want.  They are co-operating as hard as they can, but managers think they’re resistant. 

Let me give you a wonderful example of how the organization really started to embrace the fact that we were in fact cooperating as hard as they can.  

 When I started, I wasn’t told that we had to vote on the name of the organization. I have to tell you that there was not a shred of consensus on what we could call ourselves.  I thought this is the big chance. People said we have to get rid of the word “blind” but others thought no one was going to give us any money if we got rid of the word “blind”.  “Royal”. This was the big opportunity to loose the word “Royal”. After all we’re going to be a republic! But, the world “Royal” makes us so special and credible. And there wasn’t a shred of consensus. 

 If you listen to what people were saying, they were cooperating as hard as they can.  What they were putting up was “we want to be the best possible organization, we want to have a name that gives us the best possible chance”. 

If I had seen them as resistant, I would want to break down their argument.  If someone’s resistant you want to find the weakness in what they’re saying so you can get the truth across. 

If you recognize they are cooperating as hard as they can, you’re listening and you start to think “what is it that they don’t understand that I’m offering, what is it that they’re afraid of loosing, what’s the solution they are putting up”.  You start to have a conversation of possibility.  Even if you don’t believe in resistance, I’d invite you to start playing the game because you’ll have a different conversation with the person.

Vision Australia realized it was cooperating as hard as it could around the name, people were resisting and we were having a conversation of possibilities that led us to Vision Australia and when we voted on it, we went from having no single shred of consensus to a 90% agreement because we had embarked on a conversation of possibility. 

That conversation of possibility has helped us to do amazing things, we now have seven organizations and have just sold a building on St. Kilda Road with not a single complaint from the organization, because they recognized it was institutional and in the past and we had to move forward to the future.  We’ve just sold a whole lot of property and unlocked an additional $50 million of resources despite establishing four new centres. 

A conversation of possibility is doing amazing things.  Our sector needs this conversation now more than ever.  Why? Because in 10 years time, people who are blind and have low vision are going to double.  Despite all the things we have heard about, the number of people will double.  What does that mean? We’re going to have to supply double the services and supply double the income, probably more, due to inflation.  How are we going to do that?  By doing something different and having a conversation of possibility. 

It is going to be harder to raise the income and do those things, because there are Government agencies who think that blindness is solved, low-vision is off the agenda.  We’re going to be out of business in 20 years, we won’t be needed.  That might be true, but in 10 years we think we’re still going to be needed. 

We have a whole chain of problems, the legacy market may well be gone in 10 years, not for profit organizations are no longer immune from press criticism.  If we want to earn more money, we need to do more commercial things.  Things are changing.

If you look at technology, 10 years ago everything was held on chip, but 10 years later there was a different chip that held double or quadruple the information.  A conversation of possibility meant we had to come up with a whole new way of doing things. 

That’s the challenge for Vision Australia, that’s the challenge for RNZFB.  We now have to have that conversation of possibility if we’re not going to go over that waterfall and if we’re going to be ready in 10 years time to deal with this doubling population.

I have one more question to help you practice finding solutions.  I know the blindness community is not a drinking community, and I’m really delighted that on the back wall is a whole lot of sayings and one of them is a seven course meal – a pie and six beers.  I’m home! 

So what’s a hangover? Tell me what a hangover is.  It’s a headache, dehydration, don’t do it again etc.. It’s a sign of one thing and one thing only… it’s a sign that you’ve stopped drinking! It should be embraced because you’ve stopped drinking – it’s the pain of the solution.  I hope that you recognize that you are all cooperating as much as you can, you have a world of possibility and a great hangover.

Panel Discussion (morning) – Future Trends

Panel: Sandra Budd, Gerard Menses, Dianne Sharp, Gerard Rahman, Don McKenzie, Karen Stobbs and Steve La Grow.

 

Question: What do you think the keys issues are for the Foundation in terms of blind and low vision people for the year 2020?

Answer: It’s about being open to change, open to listening and redefining who we are in the future.  It’s a great journey and openness is important.

Question: With the Generation Y, they are much more “about me” – more about flexible working, want more money, want things quickly, the latest of technology.  How do you think this is going to impact and what are we going to do about it?

Answer: Sounds like me as a kid.  I think we’re all like that – the challenge is the challenge faced globally.  How do we create an inclusive society?  As a not for profit society, we have a different way of rewarding our staff and culture is a key.  We have to create culture where our staff have a “moral skin”, they engage with a mission.  We’re a living partnership and we’re inviting people into that partnership.  It’s a partnership of equity, reflecting that new way of working and having fun together.  We have to be playful and creative.

Question: You picked up that 50 percent of costs are staff costs – how much of that goes into recruitment rather than retention, particularly overseas recruitment?

Answer: More than 50 percent of total costs are purely salaries.  I didn’t include recruitment costs in that figure. 

Question: Does the panel think the next generation of people with disabilities, whether that group will want to be self-directed, active and independent or will they want to just be content with support and doing nothing?

Answer: When we do a client satisfaction survey at Vision Australia and we translate results.  The biggest cluster is 2.5 percent - in other words there is no typical client.  All of that will be true.  We will see a change – i.e. “I don’t have a disability, I have a nuisance,” which is a sign of a cultural shift.  We will be working helping people to overcome that nuisance.  I think it will be quite a mixed bag. There is a move worldwide about being in control of your own destiny.  There is an issue around being in control and making your own choices.  It’s not about whether you’re more active or more involved, it’s about having choice.

I agree with that, people will always want to take more responsibility.  There is no indication that people will want to become less interested in determining their own welfare, and as society becomes more inclusive expectations will raise.  Parents of the future will also in the days of new scientific discoveries will want the best for their offspring and that is entirely reasonable.

The elderly have varying perspectives in life and part of that is kicking about and enjoying “what is” but it will be around providing other useful pursuits that will keep people engaged in society.  It will be a mixed bag, it’s a very diverse population.

I think basically it has to do with what people are valuing and people will wish to be autonomous in terms of the value and it may be somewhat age-related and other age groups valuing recreation.  What do people value and how are our values going to be met?

Question:  I would like the panel to give some information about how across the world the definition of eligibility, and in particular how the panel feels towards the future – the scope of who may be eligible for service?  In terms of definition of how bad a person’s sight may or may not be in order to receive services.

Answer: Registration with the Foundation is a registered vision of 6/24.

Question: My question was more related to how in other parts of the world there is no clinical definition, membership is more defined on the needs of people – i.e. more of a functional approach.

Answer:  Registration is a gate-keeping exercise, so might it be better to do a gate-keeping exercise, providing free services at one end and fully-funded services at consumer expense at the other end of the spectrum?  It’s something to think about.

Question: The research you talked about talks about cures and preventions of macular degeneration.  Were they permanent cures or do they delay the onset? Do we end up with requiring delayed services?

Answer:  We do have immediate treatments and other treatments prolonging those treatments.  We don’t know how long it will work.  If we can hold on for another five years, we may see treatments that take us even further than that.   The biggest problem that I see, is that I do see people that can’t get treatment due to economic reasons.  In Australia they have Lucentis, they have Government funding.  We do not have that in New Zealand, we have people going blind because they cannot get access to treatment.  RNZFB needs to address this.  I believe technology will bring things that will delay loss of vision, address recurrences and find cures in the years ahead.

Question: What is Lucentis?

Answer:  Lucentis treatment is a drug, which is injected into the eye.  It currently requires treatment on a monthly basis.  Two or three-monthly may be sufficient.  Agents which may be long-release agents may be planted in the eye.  Lucentis currently costs $2,000 for the drug per treatment and is not funded, or covered by insurance.  We have a cheaper agent that is similar, but has not gone through trials. That costs about $100 which is fine.  This will not take us forward when other new agents come forward that may not be as cheap, which is why we need to set in place a system where our Government does recognize that we will have to have these expensive therapies.

Question: How do you fund finances for Vision Australia and how do you plan for 2020 financially?

Answer: 30 percent income from Government, 30 percent from legacies and the rest is through fundraising and occasional service fees.  We see all these under stress.  Quality of services equals relationships, quality of relationships equals revenue.  Vision Australia is the most credible choice in the not for profit sector, so profiling our brand.  We’re looking at reinventing things like gambling.  Is there intellectual property we have that we can commercialize?  There is a lot of leading edge technology – i.e. taking books.  We’re looking at what business propositions we can do that don’t take us away from what our core objectives are.

Panel discussion (afternoon) and concluding remarks

 

Panel Discussion: Pulling it all together.

Panel: Sandra Budd, Gerard Menses, Dianne Sharp, Gerard Rahman, Don McKenzie and Karen Stobbs.

 

Question: What have you taken from today that has excited you?

Answer: The thing that excited me the most is that this is a great opportunity to do something different.  People were keen to explore a sense of difference.

I’m excited that we’re here, that we’ve started the conversation.  Everyone has given so much energy and seems to have heard the message and hasn’t cross-questioned that we haven’t just gone ahead and moved forward.

I was excited because I never heard 60 seconds once! I was excited by the breadth of ideas and the willingness to embrace new ideas and ways of thinking.  There is a freedom to think the whole exercise and I’m really chuffed by that, it’s really great.

It’s certainly exciting to sense the willingness to change and look to the future, which brings us back to the quote “when old people plant trees in whose shade they will never rest”.  I think that’s what we’re doing – we’re setting forward where we’re going to be in the future.  Some of them are hard, but it’s good to see people changing at the way they’re looking at things.

The groups I sat in were in that space where they were dwelling on possibilities.  People were very open to talking and sharing.

Last year I was excited, now I believe we can change course. Now I’m a believer!

Question: Was there anything about today that saddened you or made you sad?

Answer: No – only that we couldn’t have more people here today.

We need to do this process over again, in fact that’s the way this has been structured to an extent.  It would have been great to have had three or four times as many people here today. 

Question: Where do you think the biggest bang for your buck will come from?

Answer:  I don’t know if that is a question that I need to answer right now.  I believe that the answer will come out during this year and I think there are so many good ideas and themes that are coming through.

From talking and having the conversation of possibility.  There are a lot of ideas in this room.  The biggest bang for our buck we got was from talking – we had over 1000 focus groups and we made sure our services were relevant.  The blindness sector has been fractionalized and I think the biggest bang will be from having that conversation of possibility.

From working together.  We’ve shown through our ideas in such a short space of time that there’s such a lot of consistency and thinking, but also some real group out there ideas that are starting to come through.  Through working through those together we’ll figure out what is going to be the biggest bang for our buck.

I think the biggest bang will come from relating to our various communities, not only the biggest community we’re here to serve but also the wider community those interested in vision and sciences, health, public policy, donors, selling our message, being smart about telling our story.

I think the one of the biggest bang for your buck will come through advocacy, that prevention will be absolutely massively important.  Advocacy doesn’t have to be expensive but this is a large and powerful organization which can change things.  Don’t underestimate the power to change things.

It has started! It’s sky rockets today getting this off the ground.  The understandings and common ground will direct you to the biggest bangs for your buck. 

Question: What has focused in your mind as a result of today?

Answer: This was the right thing to do, we have started a journey that won’t finish, that we’re beginning a very exciting time and it’s more than focus, it’s been a reconfirmation.  I’m looking forward to this journey.

The conversation of possibility that you’re embarking on as to who you are going to serve.  There is the greatest richness of diversity in conversation and there clearly needs to be a lot of dialogue around “we can’t be all things to all people” and “we have to be all things to all people”. 

In another big step in our adaptation, I have the feeling that given the rate of change in the world in which we live, we need to build into our processes for the future ways of continually adapting, having similar exercises of this kind about how we can continually be in touch with our various public.  Adaptability.

Don’t be frightened of those challenging conversations, they are opportunities and it’s important the communication goes both ways.  You get richness through these conversations.  You have a real willingness and an energy to stay in these conversations until the who, what and how is worked out.

Question: I’m representing the parents of the visually impaired and want to give you something to consider rather than discuss.  Talking about what we’re looking towards in 2020, I hope we consider the needs of our children today, because in 2020 they are going to be the people we are serving.  We need to be here for them because they’re the ones with the open minds and we might look to consult with them as well.  They’re less embarrassed about speaking their mind.

Answer: I couldn’t agree more and there are people who work here who are passionate about this.  The children of today are the citizens of tomorrow, they’re going to grow up in a challenging world and we need to ensure they get the best possible start they can.  In both of the groups I sat in, without me injecting the topic, the wellbeing of children and families came up. There was useful, helpful and future-looking focus that came spontaneously from those groups.  Be assured that we care deeply about blind children and their wider families.

Question: As I stand here, I want you to think about the staff that work in the field and those who have left, and those who are leaving.  My question is to Don and Sandra and the question relates to how when the HR Manager Ric came on board, soon in his term he made mention of valuing staff.  I’m asking you please would you have just more than conversations about opportunities, will you return home and also have conversations with your staff, from Don and Sandra right down to Service Coordinators.  Where is the forum, or how do you know what passionate staff are experiencing at the coal face, out in the field and working in the culture of this organisation.  Do we want senior staff who are managing people and valuing learning and development as a basis for how we behave inside and outside the organization.

Answer:  That is a heart felt question and one that fits very appropriately with where the Board and myself are committed to, to the development of a culture for the organization. That includes as a high priority the valuing of staff and to look at the organization, leadership and development of our staff.  I have a strong commitment and come from a background that works in that area.  I’ve worked in workforce and have developed teams and staff and this will be part of the development of our culture.  The question around the involvement of staff – we are still working through the process that will develop from today as to how we now involve a range of our stakeholders.  Our staff are key stakeholders, and as we evolve today we will be looking to communicate with our stakeholders and staff about how they can be involved in the process from today on.  So sharing what has come out of today and involving them in the process as we move on.

Closing Address - Where to from here? Don McKenzie, Chairman and Sandra Budd, Chief Executive

 

Ross started off the day with a Karakia and asked for clarity and consideration and we have had a great deal of that.  I’ve had the privilege of kicking the ball off today and there have been a few scrums.  All in all it has been an extraordinarily useful exercise.  Thank you for coming, for taking the time out, thank you to the people who have travelled some distance.  Thank you for accepting the invitation and challenge and be assured that these ideas you have shared with us today will have meaning.

I would like to think you will go back and tell others about the exercise and that you will go back feeling enriched and empowered.  We are only just starting this process and there’s a lot more to go on.  There will be refining as we go, as I think we heard in Lesley-Anne’s presentation, it’s pretty easy for an exercise of this nature to develop a whole lot of expectations, but that’s not going to happen.  What is going to happen is a detailed refinement of the themes that come through, a testing of those themes that come through.  You can be absolutely assured we have taken note of what Gerard has said – if you see a train coming your way, get out of the way! If you bury your head in the sand you’ll get lost. That’s not going to happen, we will not be burying our heads in the sand and that’s what this exercise is about.

Thanks Don.  My job is to do the thank yous.  We have already done our thank yous for the note-takers, facilitators and, on behalf Don, the management and I we would like to thank you.  You have put in a lot of extra hours and I know the facilitators have done a lot of extra training.  You gave your own time in busy days to do that, so thank you and it is truly appreciated.  Note-takers, it’s always very hard to capture the themes.  Your feedback demonstrated how well you’ve done. 

Thank you to the key note speakers and we wouldn’t be where we are today without the wisdom from Lesley-Anne who, I have to tell you, did her answer to the questions at nine pm one night.  She was so receptive and helpful to get the questions answered that we had asked of her. 

Gerard, well what can I say – Excellent! Brilliant!  All of those things.  You really stimulated us and threw out the rule book and you really got our thinking going, you gave us quotes we are going to steal and I can see that the conversations are going to be something we are going to pick up on and have.  We don’t want to reach that waterfall and now it’s a matter of us appreciating the diversity of opinion and bringing out diversity and finding solutions from it.  So thank you.

To Dianne Sharp – without your giving us the big picture of the future of what’s possible and what is out there, without challenging us with the picture of the future and the role the Foundation can play in raising awareness with the public, government and local bodies, you’ve given us a springboard to really start to think about for the future.  Thank you for your time with us and I hope you can continue to be involved in this process.

To our other two panellists, thank you to Steve La-Grow and to Karen who stepped in on behalf of Gwen Nagel who couldn’t be here today. 

There are those people who do all the work in the background and two people who have made us sound good and kept everything running smoothly is Ivan and Derek, thank you.

We have been kept fed, watered and everything on time and the work that our Executive Assistant’s have done throughout this whole process is great.  Raewyne, Suzanne and Valerie.  Thank you, we really appreciate all the work you’ve done. 

Finally on the thank you front, our two people in the background who have been doing a lot of the work – Ruth has been working like crazy and project-managing this for us. 

Finally, Gerard has done an incredible amount of work for this – Gerard you have been brilliant.

Of course the person who have made it all happen and intrigued us with her statistics is Briar – thank you.

So where are we going to go? Sandra will talk to us today about our steps between where we are today and where we are going to go? 

I want to talk a little bit about where we are going to finish up.  This will finish up in a document the Board will produce that will focus on one thing – the RNZFB’s sustainability into the future.  That’s what it is all about and that will be looking at outcomes for members and it will be clear, brief, concise and show the directions in which we will be headed as a result of all the conversations that we are having.  The conversations about what is doable.  We have to be absolutely realistic and we will be living well within our means. 

Again, I want to thank you all for coming along and participating.  We are at the start of a journey which will finish in about a years time.

Often we do these sorts of things and we think “that was fun, what happens now?”.  A lot will happen, we will continue to work with you all, our members staff, consumer organizations and committees.  We want to understand what we do and why as we go through this journey, so we will continue to want to gather your ideas as we move along.

There are a number of ways this has been set in place already.  From today there will be audio tapes of the main speeches, the collation of the information that we have all put together will be collated and that will be available for review.

The next step on the journey after this will be that we will start selecting participants in forming five working groups.  If anyone is interested, let us know.  We will be keeping in touch with you.  If you don’t want to, then let us know. 

The idea of these five working groups will be that they will be tasked with coming up with some strategic options for the future and we will be asking them to think outside the square, to take the information we have gathered today and to think about the future of the Foundation.  This work will be done in quite short time frame in March and April.  They will be asked to really work hard during that time, it will be very intense.

The idea is that they will capture the strategic options and then they will come up with a story, a narrative, so that they can tell the story about what this particular option looks like.  That will give us five different stories from five different groups.  These stories will be circulated widely to the stakeholders and then we will hold a second workshop and that will be to actually feed back that information.

At that second independently facilitated workshop, we expect to be around May, everyone will get to talk about the strategic option stories – what they like, what they don’t, what might change, and how they fit with what we have said the future will hold and how the Foundation will behave. 

From that workshop we will pull down the scenarios and it may end up being two or three, something that is able to be worked with.  This will be given to three new working groups who will drill down more details around them. Whether they will be feasible business case studies and economically viable. So quite a bit of analysis.  This will happen during June or July.  Once again the working groups’ findings will be distributed to stakeholders.

These findings will be considered at a third workshop and we anticipate that being around August or September.  The focus on those findings will be critiqued – does it seem to make sense? Then the information will go to the Board and a draft document will go to the Board.  From there the Board will spend time reviewing and making decisions about the future.  What we are doing this year is providing information for the Board to help inform them, so that they are in a position to work on making decision for our future. 

It’s going to be a big year, a heavy year and an exciting year and we’re looking forward to continuing our conversations with you and others. So I only have to say thank you to everyone for your wonderful contribution and I wish you a safe journey home.  Thank you, we’ll see you again in the very near future.

The workshop closed with a Karakia.