Minutes of the

New Zealand Federation for Deaf Children Inc

Annual General Meeting 2014
Date Saturday 29 June 2014
Venue Abel Tasman Hotel Wellington
Meeting opened at 9.30am
Present
Kate Whale, Jill Taylor, Andrea Craig, Janet Baillie, Kelly Davy, Kirstin Johnson-Coombs,
Brad Coombs, Soshanna Cleary (Interpreter), Hana Maguire (Interpreter), Logan Matthews,
Brent Burcher, Justin Farquhar, Chris Blum, Rebecca Poad, Kim Mather
Apologies
Catherine Trowbridge
Welcome
President Kate Whale
Additions to General Business
Banklink
Introduction of Voting Delegates
Wellington
Kim Mather
Taranaki
Kelly Davy
South Canterbury Jill Taylor
Canterbury
Logan Matthews
Auckland
Rebecca Poad
Otago
Justin Farquhar
Bay of Plenty
Brad Coombs
Receive AGM Minutes
7 July 2013
MATTERS ARISING
- Barbara ONeill last name mis-spelled.
- Page 7, NZFDC Statement of Accounts for year ending 2013, add Janet Baillie to
Members of Executive under 2013 present.

- Kelly Davy was missed out under Present under AGM.

- Name spelt wrong in AGM minutes. Under Election of Officers, Baillie misspelt.
MOTION: that the minutes of the meeting dated 7 July 2013 be received and correct.
MOVED: JANET BAILLIE
SECONDED: JILL TAYLOR
CARRIED
Presidents Report
Presidents Report
Huge changes in NZFDC children over the past year.
Since August, Kate has been involved in the Sector Advisory Group meetings (SAG) which
has included reps from MOE, MOH, MoSD, DECs, NZFDC and Deaf Aotearoa.
Kates trip to the FCEI conference in Austrial last month was ground breaking no one else is
getting everyone in the same room getting towards the same goal. Few countries in the
world have taken these steps.
Kates highlight was being able to talk to other parents from all around the world what they
have, what we have, etc we are lucky. We are able to access services for our children and
our government is listening to our familys needs, and they are listening to that.
Kate has lots of new contacts to keep in touch with about progress from our end and their
end.
NZFDC have worked towards helping new families new website, resources for parents and
teachers on website. Always adding to this. Kate advised to have a look at the NZFDC
website because there are resources to pass on to your teachers for your children.
Links on the website to wonderful resources.
Facebook page great way of getting information out to families. Continually updated.
Please add more information on to the Facebook page about you and your groups and what
you have been up to.
Parents are the best resources for their kids share those stories with other parents. Other
professionals and adults dont know what we have to deal with when keeping hearing aids on.
Southland NZFDC took a trip to Invercargill to re-start the parents group down there.
Looking at heading to Hawkes Bay in November to get a group up and running there.
Having a local parents group for the kids to play with someone they can relate to and
parents can have a chat/coffee with each other.
If there are families in a parents group that dont have a family support network please let
us at NZFDC know and we will do our best to help get this group started.
NZFDCs goals to ensure parents without parents group we can match them up to other
parents groups. Want to get these parents groups active again.
More families are encouraged to access our assistive devices, tutor fees, scholarship awards,
sporting awards etc. We arent getting the applications please go back to your parents
groups and start applying for them. We have the money sitting there for you to do this. All
the information is on our website.
Our kids have to work hard, if not harder so we should acknowledge that. We want to use
them as role models like Taylor and Santana.
Parents and professionals sick of hearing that our kids are on-par with hearing children
just because he/she is deaf, he/she can actually excel. We need to learn from them, and help
them reach for the stars.

MOTION: that the Presidents report be received and correct.

MOVED: JANET BAILLIE
SECONDED: BRENT BURCHER
CARRIED
Treasurers Report
STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS
There have been three changes to the budget that currently appear on page 27.
First is the AGM budget figures change from $5,400 to $8,000 because we are finally
getting the system a little better and all expenses to do with the AGM will be put under the
AGM not broken down to separate accounts.
Excellence awards increasing from $1,500 to $2,400 please go back to your parents
groups and promote the excellence awards and sporting awards.
Jill explained how Lauren won her year 12 award last year. Thrilled to see her and her peers
stand before her.
Last change is the external conference change that figure drops from $8,500 to $5,000 not
expecting an external conference this coming year. Kates FCEI conference was all paid by
grants and would like this to happen in future so we can use this money for our kids.
Page 20 2012 Donations went up when DEANZ were a government organization and
they folded funds were donated to NZFDC on the proviso that they are used to help reinstate or get new parent groups going. What Jill is proposing to move that amount, to sit
alongside the cheque account and when we need to access it, i.e. Hawkes Bay, we can move
this to the cheque account.
Page 24 Tauranga Funds NZ Federation have been holding for them those funds will go
back to Tauranga.
There is an amount of $61 which will be returned to Southland Southland havent got a
parents group up and running and they wish to hold NZSL classes they received a grant
through Penny Went grant because there parents group are not operational we have held
those funds for them. The funds for the classes and tutors accommodation still left us with
$61.00 this will be sent back to Southland.
You will see accounts are still in draft waiting for investments and signatories to be ironed
out. The bank hasnt quite got everything to the auditor; it is to do with investment fund to
the ASB Bank. We thought new signatories were on there, but they are not. Jill got it sorted
the week before AGM, so accounts will go up online by the end of this week full audited.
Auditor didnt have too many remarks positive remarks, travel was down and just a few
bookkeeping remarks for us.
We have moved to Banklink, which will make things a whole lot easier exported to
Treasurer to be coded and then exported back to Accountant.
MOTION: that the Treasurers report and change to budget be received and correct.
MOVED: JILL TAYLOR
SECONDED: LOGAN MATTHEWS
CARRIED
Question from Brad Coombs: $20,000 less income any reason for that.
Because one of the difficulties I had with doing the budget, you cant program donations

received. It was over $20k when DEANZ wound up.

Our DIAS funding will remain the same, that supports the family kids and newsletter. DIAs
has been reinstated for another 12 months.
Member group subs will stay the same.
Donations also received from two people who have since passed away.
Also refunds from two conferences that were refunded.
Jill also mentioned that this will be her last year on NZFDC she believes Exec should have
children in the education system so she is just putting it out there to parents groups.
PORTFOLIO REPORTS
ANDREA CRAIG
Secretary/Liaison for NZFDC. Lots of changes with technology. FB and emails and
website. Busy trying to get up and running with Kate the website updated which we think
looks amazing. If anybody has any information they would like to share, please add to our
page.
Approved minutes from our meetings are now on the website.
Keen to find out what everybody is up to in the deaf community so if there is anything you
would like to share, please contact Andrea.
KELLY DAVY
Vice President, AGM Conference Co-ordinator, DIAS Contract, Newsletter Role Multi hat
Job.
The Executive committee are first mothers of hard of hearing kids, we do not get paid we
have families and work on top of that. We do it for our children and for children around NZ
and it is because it is our passion.
We would like to connect with all parents groups. Without our regional parents groups to
nominate, they are the reason why we are here.
We would like to do the basics well, and make sure we find a way to move forward. Kelly
would like to have a new section in the AGM conference to have a time out space and meet
with youths getting to see young adults that are doing well.
Please take anything you learnt yesterday back to your parent groups and from today.
Tidying up and re-shuffling in our roles and do the best for the future of NZFDC and our
children.
JANET BAILLIE
Services Co-ordinator
We could have had a lot more applications available. Assistive devices are most common
things, tablets, laptops and mobile phones.
High standard of academic excellence awards.
The advanced learning scholarships two people received scholarship awards last year for
their time at University.
KELLY DAVY
Newsletter
Picked up from Lena, first letter in April. Once again a balance of multi-tasking multiple
different things. This went out in May. One thing to put back to parents group-if you do any
activities, please send us a blog/blurb so we can add to newsletter, photos, whats coming up,

etc to go in August newsletter. Another thing we have noted that we need to get out to
families and parent groups is we get a lot of return to sender from the newsletter, so we are
looking at a way to update our database.
CATHERINE TROWBRIDGE
Family Kits Co-ordinator
In Catherines absence, Kate spoke. She is doing a wonderful job. Kit numbers are looking
good. Getting information to audiologists so more families register.
Had lovely notes from families saying thank you to getting that information.
KIRSTIN JOHNSON-COOMBS
Fundraising
Continually looking at avenues for fundraising if anyone has ideas, please feel free to pass
them on to Kirstin.
She will also be taking over the services role so as has been said before, please remind your
parents about the services we can help with, i.e. assistive devices, tutor fees, etc.
ELECTION OF OFFICERS
We did not receive any nominations from any of the parents groups before the 31st of May.
If you have people in your parents groups who would like to come on board, please do come
and talk to us. We want more parents from all parents groups to hear their voices. We really
would like a few more people to back us up we are working pretty thin at the moment.
We can do that better if we have more people to back us up.
Kate Whale
Zis Lurajud
Margaret Cooper
Kelly
Andrea
Jill Taylor
Janet Baillie
Catherine Trowbrdige
Kirstin Johnson-Coombs

President
Honorary Vice President
Honorary Vice President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer
Committee member
Committee member
Committee member Co-opted

To confirm the above names above/people in the roles/exsecutive committee

MOTION that the Election of Officers be received and correct.
MOVED: KATE WHALE
SECONDED: KELLY DAVY
CARRIED
REMITS
THERE WERE NO REMITS SUBMITTED THIS YEAR

GENERAL BUSINESS
Bank link:
It is a wonderful system that helps get everything sorted, between accountant and treasurer.
Internet banking:
Sometimes takes a while to get one cheque signed with people scattered around the country.
More to do with paying of accounts Internet Banking.
Please take back to your parents groups whether it will work for us, working better, the
internet banking just paying invoices.
No-body uses cheques anymore, NZ Post are slow with their mail. It doesnt work well
anymore, we want to get our group up to date.
Any feedback from parents group and suggestions would be appreciated. If they do it
similarly or another way we would like to hear about it.
Brad Coombs: Mentioned the constitution could look at being updated from normal mail, to
internet banking.
Do you have a debit/visa card for flights online, it makes life so much easier.
Brent Burcher: What we do have is a Warehouse Stationery BIZ card for all our office needs.
We have an AIR NZ Travel Card, which we book our flights. We dont have counter
signatories for these things, we can purely go online and pay that card, so dont need to send
cheques around.
With business banking systems, there are very strict rules in place regarding more than one
person being signatories. More secure than signing cheques
Website
Justin Fraquhar: Is there a place for documentation, a decent constitution, contact other
people for advice, etc. We could put this under parent resources NZFDC to look at.
Brad Coombs first impression of website was there wasnt a clear path of what it is about,
and what the local contacts are about. Maybe a plan of where to go, etc.
Brad Coombs more than happy to share an active blog through Facebook for parents.
Issue with free browser in a live feed because that would cost a bit of money but a good
suggestion.
We want an interactive part on the website but it needs to be montiored, does get quite
abused. If we get more people on the Executive Committee perhaps that could be a portfolio
role.
Clarity for Execucutive committee/Nomination process
Justin: Process-what is the process to go through to get on the Executive Committee?
1. Parent group to nominate parent from their group (on NZFDC noimnation form, and a
member group affliated to NZFDC)
2. Parent group to submit the signed noimation form to NZFDC by the date stated for
closing nominations.
3. Pending final nominations from parent groups it may require voting at the agm or if 8
or less a motion to move and second.

To go back to parents group where there is conversation and then contact President and
discussion-NZFDC. The person can be co-opted onto NZFDC only for a year for a specfic
purpose. Then at the next AGM if you want to stay on you can be nominated by your parent
group
If you know of anyone that wants to be co-opted please contact Kate Whale.
Smoke Alarms
Jill asked Justin how the smoke alarms are going in Otago. Alan spoke to us last year.
No update as yet, he still thinks he has some there but not sure of numbers.
Justin doesnt know how he is getting on.
Justin are you able to go back to your group and get an update and let us know?
We would like to help out.
Meeting Closed
10.44am
Next Meeting

_______________________________
Chairpersons signature
____28th June, 2015_______________
Date

NZFDC AGM Presidents Report (July, 2014)

Kate Whale
The last year has seen some huge changes in the NZ Federation for Deaf
Children, and I feel incredibly honored to be a part of the executive right now.
Since August I have been lucky enough to be involved in a Sector Advisory Group
meeting every month to discuss the roll out of NZ Sign Language in our schools
and universities, and access to NZSL for those children who depend on it to
access the curriculum. The group is composed of representatives from the
Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Development,
both principals of the Deaf Education Centers, Deaf Aotearoa, us (NZFDC) as
parent representatives, Deaf adults with some amazing insights, the Principals
Association (both primary and secondary) and more. These meetings are
groundbreaking in their goal to have all those with a vested interest planning the
services for our children. Even more wonderful is the ability of almost all of these
people to work together as one towards the same goal. We are one of the few
countries in the world who have taken this step.
Over the last year, the NZFDC have been doing a lot of work towards updating
our services to families, including a wonderful new website with resources for
parents and teachers, with stories about our amazing NZ kids, and information
around what is happening in the regions. Our facebook page has been a great
way of getting information out to families, and Andrea, our awesome secretary
works hard to keep everything accessible. We would love to see questions and
comments from you all here, and Id be really keen to see discussions and
information that parents may have for other parents as well. We are a
community, no matter where we are in the country, and other parents are the
best resource for those with Deaf or hearing impaired kids. Sometimes its just
an Ive been there, it will get better! or even when Bob was little, we kept his
hearing aids on with. Often professionals dont know what day to day
challenges are with our wee people, so the more contact parents have with other
parents the better things can work.
To this end, the executive travelled to Invercargil for our last meeting to get
together with some local parents who are keen to get their parent group up and
running again. We provide support on a national level to all Deaf and hearing
impaired children and their families, no matter what their affiliations. But having
a local parent group to meet with, to sit down and have a cuppa with, for our
children to play with is sometimes the difference between despair and
determination. Personally I know that without other parents to talk to when
James was very little I would more than likely have gone completely gaga. Yet
with their support, I look at my children and feel like I am the luckiest mother in
the world because we actually have more, and not less than other families.
If there are families in an area with no parent support, please do get in touch
with us, and we will try our hardest to help you out.
Another highlight of my year was attending the Family Centered Early
Intervention Conference just last month. The Conference was a gathering of
parents, professionals and researchers from all over the world to learn about best

practice in early intervention for Deaf and hearing impaired children, and to
meet other families in the same situation as our own in other countries.
While the information in the series of lectures was wonderful, the thing that I got
the most benefit from was the parent workshop on the first day of the
conference. To be able to talk to other parents from around the world (and there
were more than 30 countries represented at the conference), to see how their
countries work around Deaf education, to hear their challenges and successes, to
find out how their parent groups run and to just be able to talk about our own
experiences was beyond amazing. It also made me feel incredibly lucky that not
only are we able to access services for our children, but that we are currently at
an amazing point in time where our government are actually listening to the
needs of families and doing something about that. We are one of the few
countries in that position at the moment, and we MUST make the most of this.
While comparatively our services are very good, there is so much more we can
be doing to ensure our children succeed.
The contacts I have made at this conference will allow us to keep in touch with
developments in the rest of the world, and to be an active part in the global
community of parents of Deaf and hearing impaired children. We need not be
isolated, despite our geographical position. We can and will be a part of changes
throughout the world.
I would love to talk to anyone who wants to hear more about the FCEI
conference; Im still buzzing with amazing ideas, so be warned, getting me
started will be far easier than zipping me up!
So where to from here?
My goals for NZFDC for the next year are to ensure that those families in areas
without active parent groups have the opportunity to get together with other
families, and with the help of the NZFDC perhaps get their local group up and
running again. We would love to see every family in NZ have the support that a
parent group brings, as well as the ability for their children to get together with
other Deaf or hearing impaired kids.
I would also love to see more families applying for our Tutor Fees Assistance,
Assistive Devices, Scholarships and Excellence Awards. As we all know,
sometimes a little can go a long way, and the NZFDC have these wonderful
grants for our kids, so please! Make the most of them. The Excellence Awards are
a wonderful way of acknowledging the extra hard work that our kids put in to not
only keep up with their hearing peers, but to excel in their own way. We would
love to see the stories of our amazing children succeeding in whatever they put
their minds to, and to be able to hold these kids up as role models for the
younger children who may feel like success is just too hard.
If you have any questions about any of the financial assistance that we can offer,
please dont hesitate to contact us, or have a look on our website.
My final goal is both for you all as parents, and for the professionals in the room,
be they representatives from the Ministry of Education or teachers working right
at the grass roots level.
I am sick and tired of hearing my sons progress as labeled on par with hearing
children.

Just because he is Deaf does not mean that he cant excel in whatever he puts
his mind to. It doesnt mean that he wont become a world leader in his field, or
be a professional sportsman and represent his country, or be The Worlds Best
Dad (in many, many years, thank you very much!).
I dont want my sons goals capped at what other hearing children his age can
do. I dont want to see him constantly compared to them. I want to see the goals
for him reflect how unique he is, and how there is no limit to his potential. I think
many people tend to forget that Deaf and hearing impaired children are amazing,
unique, creative individuals, with a perspective that the majority of the world
dont have. They are far more than a kid who cant hear. We need to learn from
them, open our minds to a new view of the world, then help them to reach for
the stars.

COMMUNITY LIAISON
This year, like most others, has been a busy one for Secretary/Community Liaison role. As
this role is more about being a central focal point for information, whether it is coming in or
going out, hence why the name change. We have a separate Minute taker for our meetings.
There has been a marked increase in correspondence electronically via email from standard
post. No trotting down to the local Post Box to mail items. With some 20 emails a day
coming through the Deaf Children email address, there has been no shortage of reading and
correspondence to attend to.
The Post Box has been moved successfully from Christchurch to Wellington. With two
members available to clear it, along with my role here, it was seen as the logical place for it.
I have also covered the 0800 Mobile phone for when Kate our President, has been away.
Having the Community Liaison and Website/Facebook Page Roles together makes good
sense with communication.

WEBSITE/FACEBOOK PAGE REPORT

www.deafchildren.org.nz

www.facebook.com/nzfdc

October 2013 saw the launch of our new updated Website. It had been a long time coming
with assistance from Tony Rule (expert techie) and Kate Whale. Sourcing some free
software and cloud documentation we have created a website we are quite proud of. Many
a late night and call to Tony about something not going as it should has been a challenge for
my non-technological brain! What a learning curve certainly gives you confidence.
The challenge as with all websites, is to keep it easy to read and up to date. Registrations
coming through have been steady and some helpful link sites have been added with
suggestions from different members of the Deaf Community. We have endeavoured to be
more up to date with the Minutes from our meetings when approved are, loaded as soon as
practicable. We know that there are members out there who are keen to see what we are
working on.
Facebook Page has also been regularly updated this year on articles of interest, affecting
our children and other relevant community and adult information. Deaf Aotearoa has been
an inspiration of information lots of contacts with local events occurring. We have had
interest from Attitude TV, NZSL in Action Awards and CaptioningNZ to place links also.
Any events or items of interest please forward to me and happy to place on Facebook page.
If there is an item you are keen to learn more about, chances are someone else is too so let
us know and we are happy to put up items to assist families on our Website. We are
currently working on Tips pages to go up on the Website. Tips for surviving IEPs is due
out soon.
I would like to thank all the Executive Committee for their support and help over this past
year. We have a keen group of people who all are lovely to work with and has been a
pleasure getting to know them and to help them. It is not always easy to find the time to
devote to NZFDC at times on top of family, work and friends, however I feel it is important
and have enjoyed it. It is good to see some of the progress we are making and hope we will
continue to do so.
I hope that the next 12 months are not quite so busy but as productive. Andrea Craig