Getting our sleeves rolled up to engage with political stakeholders during party conference season is a key part of the work Locsu does with the Optical Confederation to represent the interests of opticians and optometrists.
Raising our sector’s profile with the party in power is an obvious objective but it is also important the opposition understands what we can do.
In Liverpool there was always going to be a focus on the Labour leadership result, whereas in Birmingham Brexit would most certainly be the topic dominating the delegates at the Conservative conference. Getting our views heard in among all of that was clearly going to be a challenge.
Sharing a platform with the NHS Confederation, Local Government Association and Health Foundation in the Hospitals under pressure: the community solution events, was a very effective approach to get our key messages across.
The events at both party conferences attracted a broad range of delegates and linking our argument that we can take some of the pressure off the hospital eye service to the wider context of health and social care needs was very successful.
The events also gave us a good opportunity to highlight the importance of eye health to wider health and wellbeing and to launch the new guide – Improving eye health through community optical practice: A briefing for councils.
Sticking with the theme of politicians and conferences, I am very pleased primary care minister David Mowat MP, will give a keynote speech at NOC 2016. The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health, will give his first address to the optical sector since he took over the role this summer at Locsu’s annual conference on November 10-11.
Katrina Venerus, managing director