28th Annual Report for the Year Ending 31st December 2009
President’s Annual Report 2010 as at 6 January 2010

Greetings to all our members,

The executive committee has enjoyed our time serving the members of SAC. We are glad to note that we now have 137 registered counselors, 32 ordinary members, and 153 associate members.

For each member that has been removed from the register, please note that once the Executive Committee has received the full documentation of clinical and continual professional education hours required your name will be placed back on the register.

Please remember you are only required to renew registration every two years. If you successfully renewed registration in 2009, then you will only need to renew again in 2011. Those that completed the renewal of registration process in 2008 are required to again complete the process by this coming AGM. The form can be found on our website, under the download tab. Please note that you need documentation of each requirement. Where a signature is needed it should be a supervisor, employer, or other professional that can confirm the hours you have completed. If you are uncertain about whether you are required to renew your registration this year, please contact our secretariat.

Please note that the membership fee of $40 and registration fee of $100 are due each year. For administrative purposes please pay only membership fees at the AGM. Registration form, documents and payment are to be either posted or brought to our secretariat's office.

We remain deeply grateful for the role the Singapore Professional Centre (SPC) has fulfilled as our secretariat. We especially want to give our thanks to Theresa Yeoh and Narinder Kaur who have been the providers of this work. We are especially thankful for Narinder’s continued assistance in improving the structures of our paperwork and process, allowing SAC to improve its efficiency.

We have continued our working relationship with SPC by providing career talks. I would like to give our thanks to Ben Ho for having represented SAC in five talks. These include SPC’s Career Show on 7 March 2009. The other four talks were performed at schools: Hwa Chong Institution (25 February 2009), Nanyang Junior College (13 March 2009), St Andrew’s Junior College (7 April 2009) and Temasek Junior College (13 May 2009). I look forward to even more volunteers in this coming year.

2009 represented a challenging time for the executive committee, which I believe is representative of our profession at this present time. The demands of our work, family and other personal commitments have made the work at SAC slow down this year. Each SAC member, I’m certain, has experienced a similar challenge in their life. The counseling field continues to need help in its growth, but at times each of us is so busy with so many facets of our daily work and commitments, that it becomes challenging to find the time to help the field of counseling as a whole develop and grow. In this light I would like to challenge every member to participate in one of four areas that we hope to truly target in 2010. The first is the beginning of our ethics committee. The second is the move to bring school counselors more completely under our register, and as we do better meet their needs. The third is to address the growing concerns for our counselors in the Family Service Sector. The fourth is in the development of community within our membership.

The Executive Committee has again attached the constitutional amendment for the creation of a new membership category, Intern Membership. The previous AGM did not meet quorum and so could not make the official changes. We hope that we can successfully make the changes during this coming AGM, it is an important change that if not made will continue to cause difficulties for our new members.

We have continued to develop the Course Recognition Committee, for the recognition of counselor training programmes. We are happy to announce that at this moment there are ten recognized programmes, with two further programmes in the midst of the process at this time.

2009 represented the second year of our effort to develop fellowship and networking amongst our membership. On July 28, 2009 we had a small gathering for the members of the SAC. About 30 members met at NVPC for a night of fun, fellowship, and of course food! We had a short introduction to Movie Therapy presented by our SAC member, Patrice Lee, of HOPE worldwide (Singapore). Using movies to illustrate various aspects of our profession, Patrice gave us a humorous look at ourselves, and as the saying goes 'laughter is the best medicine', especially for de-stressing. The fun continued with various interactive games, which enabled us to let our hair down and get to know one another in a more relaxed atmosphere. All of us who participated enjoyed the evening and meeting our counseling colleagues. Let's hope we can do this more often in the future. It is our hope that the active participation of our members will make 2009's fellowship meetings a success.

We look forward to meeting each of you at the coming AGM.

Sincerely,

David Blakely

President SAC