This section of our website is where you can find out what we've been doing and what we've got planned! Our more recent news is at the top, but you can also scroll down the page to see an overview of the past year or two.

When you've had a read, we’d love to know what you think of our website in our quick survey here.  We value your opinion, and many of our ideas for new products and information come from your comments, and it only takes a few minutes! What's more, in return for your valuable opinion, we'll send you a copy of our exclusive and unique 8-page booklet, 'Tips for a Lively 2012'!

Christmas 2011

It's been a busy autumn, and if you subscribe to our newsletter you will have seen some of the things we have been up to. We have almost completed our task of making our ebooks into published books to make them more accessible to everyone - it sounds a bit like technology in reverse, but it works! So you can now get 'Providing Structured Diabetes Education for Children and Young People', written by Rebecca Hannan, as a printed book, which has proved very popular!

We've also had a busy autumn with Personalised Care Planning and Group Education Facilitation Skills workshops, which people are finding invaluable in helping them to work in a more person centred way. And hot on the heels of the workshop we ran in May 2011 with Bob Anderson, we are pleased to announce that we are able to run a similar workshop in 2012! Watch this space - we'll let you know details when we have them.

We hope 2011 was successful for you, and look forward to talking to you more in the new year.

Summer 2011

Wow! what a busy time...as promised below, we have published 2 new Successful Diabetes handbooks, 'Success with Your Insulin Pump' and 'Implementing Personalised Care Planning in Long Term Conditions'.  The workshop with Bob Anderson on diabetes self care in the new NHS was a resounding success, attended by over 100 people of many different disciplines and perspectives. One of the most common words used in the evaluations was 'inspiring'!  We are hoping to provide more such workshops in the future - another space to watch!

We've recently launched our latest venture - our blog, 'SD Listens'.  This is to provide comment on topical issues and a place for discussion and debate. We're looking forward to some lively exchanges!

We have also been out and about as usual, providing our workshops around the country, but now the Summer is here it is a bit quieter and we're looking forward to a bit of a rest and a tidy up in the office! Wishing you all  - and ourselves - happy holidays!

Late Spring 2011

We learnt about the latest developments at the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference back in March/April and met up with many friends and colleagues there. The social programme was excellent, too!

Hot on the heels of our Type 2 diabetes handbook, we published 'Group Education and Facilitation Skills in Healthcare Settings', a handbook to help anyone who is involved in providing group education to plan, prepare and deal with every eventuality. Lots of tips, stories, troubleshooting and step by step guides to holding a really effective group education session.  It's available both in paperback and as a dowload from here and will also shortly be on Amazon, too!

Looking forward to co-presenting 'Self Care in the New NHS' workshop with Bob Anderson and Trudi Deakin on 11th May (see details here) and to several workshops in the coming months for diabetes teams, including group education facilitation skills and personalised care planning.  We also have two new books to publish - watch this space!

Early Spring 2011

Among our usual array of workshops and presentations around the country, including recently in Warwick Medical School, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Colchester, we have been writing our latest paperback book 'The Successful Diabetes Handbook for Type 2 Diabetes' which we published on 9th March. We're delighted to announce that this great new resource has all our trademark practical, useful information for getting to grips with living with Type 2 diabetes. Its sections include managing food, the emotional effect, blood glucose monitoring, managing medical care, how to lose weight and become more active, and plenty of tips and recipes as well.  It's available now on Amazon here and from www.lulu.com here

Winter 2010/2011

We've spent the first few weeks of the year putting the finishing touches to our latest recipe ebook 'Chinese Cooking for Diabetes' - testing out the recipes has been great fun, and delicious too! The ebook arrived in our shop on 3rd February, to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

We've also run several workshops and courses.  We were particularly pleased to provide another workshop in Milton Keynes.  Over the last couple of years, we have been delighted to provide a great deal of  training in personalised care planning, as they have rolled out this process across every practice. This photo shows us (centre) with Sue Weatherfield (left) and Ruth Chilcraft (right) of MK Diabetes, who have been instrumental in designing the new service in the area. We're really proud to have been involved in helping them create their fantastic success!

Autumn 2010

This year seems to be flying by! Since the summer, we've been busy running several workshops for diabetes teams and at conferences, on topics including personalised care planning and group education facilitation skills. We've really enjoyed these, and you can see what the participants thought about them too, on our testimonials pages. We've also had the pleasure of working with some diabetes teams and  individual practices to develop their skills in personalised care planning for long term conditions generally, as well as for diabetes. We're delighted by the way personalised care planning approaches are being adopted by so many services, as they see for themselves the benefits it brings for themselves and people with diabetes and other long term conditions alike.

In October we found time to visit Bob Anderson and Marti Funnell in Michigan, USA (see our entry for February 2010, below, for more information).  It was fascinating to see the Empowerment approach in action during some peer-led group education sessions there, which promote personal goal setting, self care experiments and peer support. We learnt a lot, but we also found it reassuring that so much of the way the sessions ran was similar to our own approach and experience.

Our most recent activities have been connected with the launch for World Diabetes Day of the Successful Diabetes Essential Cookbook Collection, with the first title in our recipe ebook range being Christmas Cooking for Diabetes. We love this ebook and have really enjoyed creating the exciting recipes in it. They're a mixture of the ultra-modern and traditional favourites, and we hope you enjoy them too.

Summer 2010

Over the Summer months, we have been working hard on our ebook collection - to date, we have 9 titles, written either by us or by colleagues living or working with diabetes. We have been listening to what you have said you would like from us, and working on ideas behind the scenes, including a cookbook range designed specifically to provide useful information to people with diabetes. We have also been working with a number of localities across the country who are beginning to embrace Care Planning and have a busy Autumn ahead.

March 2010

Following Bob Anderson’s visit to SD at the end of February, we went to the Diabetes UK professional conference in Liverpool. We had a great time, meeting up with many of you as well as lots of other friends and colleagues. Bob gave a presentation to a packed audience who really enjoyed hearing about his empowerment approach first hand. The photo shows Bob in action at the conference.

February 2010
In February, Bob Anderson, our friend and colleague, came to spend a few days with us before his presentation to the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference in March. The photo shows us with Bob during our discussions.

Why is Bob an important person in the world of diabetes care? His official position is as Professor and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.  His research centres on the Empowerment Approach, which he created, named and has repeatedly shown the value of in supporting people in living with their diabetes. For example, Bob has shown that people with diabetes are more likely to discover useful information by asking questions themselves than by answering health professionals’ questions. So when health professionals concentrate on discovering and working with a person’s main concern about their diabetes, rather than their own, that brings about change in their lives. Also, it is important to concentrate on a person’s feelings and values rather than simply their test results, as this makes a difference to their confidence in managing their condition. We’ve provided a more detailed description of the empowerment approach in SD Focus if you want to find out more.

Although Bob has provided a great deal of scientific evidence for the Empowerment Approach, he is most interested in exploring the conditions in which a health professional and a person with diabetes can work together to enable the person to reach their personal goals and wishes for their life. This approach requires health professionals to recognise that people are in charge of their lives, regardless of what they (the health professionals) think, and that the decisions the person makes every day have more impact on their health-related outcomes than the decisions that a health professional might make on their behalf. This means that health professionals need to listen more and talk less, to encourage questions rather than provide instruction, and when they do ask questions, to ask open questions without pre-judging or assuming the answers.

Bob’s definition of the empowerment approach is ‘helping patients discover and develop their inherent capacity to be responsible for their own lives and gain mastery over their diabetes’. Jill and Rosie (who run Successful Diabetes) had already started to adopt this philosophy in their work and since 1998, we have been friends and have collaborated with Bob on our empowerment work.

We have worked with Bob to ‘spread the word’ about the Empowerment Approach in the UK over many years, running workshops and writing many articles.

Bob is a warm and generous human being who has been a willing source of inspiration and support to us as well as thousands of others worldwide over many years, and we were so proud to welcome him to our offices!

January 2010

In January, as well as running our care planning and consultation skills workshops and facilitating our SCO-TT online learning courses, our main highlight was a 4-day visit to Kuwait to provide diabetes update workshops for health professionals providing medical care for staff in the oil industry there.

Kuwait, in the Middle East, is in the top ten countries worldwide with the highest prevalence of Type 2 diabetes, so up to date and specialist diabetes care is essential. We were delighted to be invited to help in this process and designed a programme that the participants really enjoyed as well as learning a great deal from.

In our spare time, after the workshops each day, we were able to enjoy escaping from the snow and ice in the UK to the warm weather, and we took the chance to swim in the Gulf as well as to learn about the culture and traditions of this tiny country. It was a fascinating and useful experience and we hope to go again to provide some more workshops.