In our last newsletter we had just held our annual #Give Back event where we raised a grand total of £1,353 for two charities close to the heart of our colleague Lisa who sadly passed away. We wrote to Lisa’s family to let them know that we had held an event in Lisa’s honour and to share what we had raised. 

Below is a text from Lisa’s husband in reply. 

“Good morning Laura. I’ve been meaning to send this message for quite a while so apologies. Please pass on to all at Proclaim.

Erin and I were blown away by Proclaims fundraising efforts! You are all really special people. The personal nature of how you organised and why was particularly touching. 
Lisa would have loved this day with lots 
of giggles, fun and activity! 

The whole wider family send our sincere thanks and appreciation and reminder to celebrate often and love living our wonderful lives!

Diolch yn Fawr”

We are sponsoring the Barnham Trojans – Reds for another year. This is Flora’s son Toby’s football team and below is a picture of them in their strips after being runners-up in a tournament of 32 teams last weekend. 

Hot off the press! We have just agreed sponsorship of a youth football team local to our office in Hamilton for the next two years. 

More details to follow.

As part of our Environmental and Social Governance, as a business we are open to opportunities to help in the community. 

When the opportunity presented itself recently to support Headway North Lanarkshire restart their committee, we were keen to help. As you know, Headway is a fantastic organisation who support individuals with brain injuries. We often refer our own clients to one of the Headway centres across the UK. The North Lanarkshire unit was at risk of closing had it not been for the team at Murdostoun stepping in to take over. Murdostoun is a brain injury rehabilitation unit based in Wishaw, Scotland and they often refer their discharged patients on to Headway as a means of ongoing support. 

Laura received a request from Gillian Munday, the new chair of Headway North Lanarkshire for any of our team that would want to volunteer or support the committee. Lauren Hamilton used to work with the team at Murdostoun and stepped forward to offer her support. Tracey Buchanan also wanted to provide support to the group.

Both Lauren and Tracey attended the first committee meeting a couple of weeks ago and both are now members of the committee with Tracey looking to take on the role of treasurer. The new committee is just forming and there is a lot to be done but we will keep you updated as to their progress.

In the meantime, if any of our Scottish team members are interested in volunteering at the drop-in centre (every Thursday, 12-2pm in Wishaw), then please speak to Tracey or Lauren for more information. The business will support any team member wishing to take time out to take part in this great cause. 

Headway is keen to build their fundraising and weekly drop-in centre activities, if anyone has any thoughts or ideas for fundraising, either for us as a business to help or to put to Headway, please let Lauren or Tracey know. Any support we can give them, particularly until they re-establish themselves will be greatly appreciated.   

I became involved in 100 Ladles Action for Homelessness and Hunger (a local Homeless project in Northampton) in 2019. I joined a large group of volunteers who were all passionate about supporting the most vulnerable members of our community. Our focus is making sure the service users enjoy a nutritious home cooked meal once per week, which we, as volunteers fund the ingredients for and prepare – my kitchen often looks like a bomb site afterwards. I’m pleased the food hygiene inspection took place on a calm day in my house!   

On average, I prepare one large meal for up to 25 people every six weeks as part of the rota. We aim to cook for up to 100 people per week (numbers can rise and fall as you can imagine), there is usually four of us needed each week for this to happen. Another volunteer rota is in place for provision of small snack bags for users to take away. When it’s my turn, I usually delegate this task to my son’s (giving them a budget to work towards – still trying to teach my teenager that money doesn’t grow on trees!).

My youngest son likes to make cornflake cakes to add into the bags. The bags usually include a piece of fruit, a cereal bar, a biscuit bar, and a bag of crisps. Greggs (the bakery) add to the bags at the time of service, donating unsold sandwiches, cakes, and savouries. A local cash and carry donate bottles of water. The snack bags are usually full to the brim! The project also collects continual donations of toiletries, gloves, blankets, etc, throughout the week; all the essential items to enable further ‘care packs’ to be handed out at the weekly service. I often donate clothes I no longer need. 

As volunteers, we are invited to serve our meal and help during the service with handing out donations and of course chatting to the users. I have done this a handful of times and it really is an eye opener and reinforces the importance of the project and the work that we all do. If anyone has any veggie recipes, let me know… I always struggle to be inventive when it’s my ‘veggie week’!

I decided to challenge myself and raise money for Macmillan Cancer who supported my mum throughout her treatment and recovery – evenif it was for a chat over the telephone whenever she was struggling. 

I want to thank you all for the donations and yes, I completed it! I was so glad to get through that finishing line. I met so many lovely people along the way from all over the UK during the event and the camaraderie was amazing.

I am sure there are many more examples of #giveback to share, so please keep us posted and we can feature what you do or an organisation you are involved with 
in a future newsletter.

General Market

The insurance market is experiencing the same pressures on cost increases as all businesses. 

For example, in the motor market there is a shortage of car parts, leading to increased repair costs and time for the repairs to be completed. Despite this, our customers have been understanding and responsive to the need for Proclaim Group to increase our fees where appropriate. You will be aware we have negotiated fee increases with our main customers for Proclaim Care and Obair Associates. Discussions continue with our other customers, where we have not had an increase for some time.

Customer Update

It has been a very positive period for us working with our customers across the Group and we have been successful in securing new work in Proclaim Care and Obair Associates.

We are in a fortunate position that all our existing customers are providing good support across Proclaim Care, Obair Associates and Resolve Health. The referral levels are near to the budgeted levels that we set at the start of the financial year.

Proclaim Care – we are seeing opportunities with several customer to extend our service and we are hopeful that these come to fruition in the next few months.

Obair Associates – our relationship with Aviva Healthcare has developed strongly and we have won a new piece of business to provide Vocational Rehabilitation to their Group Income Protection customers. This is similar to the work that Proclaim Care currently delivers to AIG. As part of this work, we will have the opportunity to instruct for other Proclaim Group services, such as treatment through Resolve Health.

This is an exciting development, and the service will roll out over the next few weeks, delivered by MIT.

Resolve Health – have been rolling out their psychological service to Proclaim Care Rehabilitation Managers and this will grow over the next few months.

Proclaim Care – we have started working with Capulus (claims handling unit called One Claim) and they have started to refer to Proclaim Care and Resolve Health.

Nelson Insurance, a motor fleet insurer has confirmed that they are looking to work with us, and we are awaiting a date to start. Likewise, as mentioned in the last Newsletter, Hastings Direct Large Loss team are keen to work with us on a non-contract basis and we expect referrals to pick up.

Obair Associates – we have secured work with Burness Paull for a OH based rehabilitation service and this work has started with referrals being received from 1st June 2023.

New Business Opportunities

There is a good pipeline of opportunities for us to grow the business in both Obair and Proclaim Care. You will recall from the ‘Town Hall’ we discussed the levers of profit, with the first lever being referrals received into the business. As part of our work in this area, we have been reviewing the services we offer and how they are presented.  Specifically, in Obair this has resulted in a piece of work to review and refresh all the case management services. You will hear more about this in the coming weeks.

Marketing

We have been very visible in all our markets to make sure that we are promoting our business, our services and our people. A key focus in Proclaim Care has been raising our presence in the solicitor market and we have run several marketing events in in the last few months. For Obair we are planning a marketing campaign to attract more case management company referrals.