THE ANZFSS (Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society) presents the 20th International Symposiumon the Forensic Sciences in Sydney,  5th - 9th September 2010

 

Dear Colleagues,

The committee decided it needed to be a bit more proactive in keeping members informed about FAMSACA’s activities. This email is to give you a brief update on issues that are being discussed, decided or acted upon by the committee.

1.    2008 professional meeting

In early 2007, it was decided to hold FAMSACA’s conference biennially (from 2007) and less formal meeting(s) in the alternate years, in recognition of the time, energy and cost of planning and delivering conferences and the fairly limited human resources within FAMSACA.

FAMSACA was invited to hold a meeting in Perth at the same time as the Sexual Health and ASHM (Australasian Society of HIV Medicine) conferences (15-20 September inclusive, run back to back). Discussions are continuing about this, as well as about educational meetings elsewhere (as distance may be prohibitive for some members). A decision will be made shortly about location and content and we’ll let you know so you can start your arrangements.

2.    SAFE Newsletter.

WA has done a masterful job driving and editing this newsletter, thank you Debbie Smith. It is time for another group to take over. So we are asking for volunteers – they may come out of the one organization or be a group of individuals who work together. Great fun and very interesting.

Debbie Smith and Maureen Phillips could give you a good idea of what’s involved (as could Ange Williams from Vic who did it for a while too). Their contact details are: debbie.smith@health.wa.gov.au Maureen.phillips@health.wa.gov.au  angelac@vifm.org

3.    FAMSACA and DSAC

There have been very informal discussions between Pres Ange Williams and our New Zealand colleagues about strengthening ties to improve collegial support and professional performance. Ange will discuss this again in a couple of months when she visits NZ (is that right??)

4.    Work groups

The work groups are grinding back into action. If anyone is interested in contributing, I am attaching a list of the groups, their members and their key roles.

5.    Communications

The FAMSACA website is being updated http://www.famsacaustralia.org.au/ . Please provide any suggestions on how it can be improved (on a shoestring budget) to Ange Williams at angelac@vifm.org. More particularly, anyone with website, IT skills to assist in managing it please contact Ange as well.

The committee is investigating setting up an email group using a listserver. Mandy Ashton from NSW is driving this. If you have any information, please contact her Mandy_Ashton@wsahs.nsw.gov.au .

We welcome any feedback you’d like to provide; please send it to Jan Savage at jansavage@internode.on.net 

Kind regards

Dr Angela Williams President FAMSACA

Dr Jan Savage  Secretary FAMSACA

 

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Invitation to produce SAFE Newsletter

WA has done a masterful job driving and editing this newsletter, thank you Debbie Smith. It is time for another group to take over. So we are asking for volunteers – they may come out of the one organization or be a group of individuals who work together, or are simply united by their professional interest. Great fun and very interesting.

Debbie Smith and Maureen Phillips could give you a good idea of what’s involved (as could Ange Williams from Vic who did it for a while too). Their contact details are: debbie.smith@health.wa.gov.au Maureen.phillips@health.wa.gov.au  angelac@vifm.org

It’s a good opportunity to refine your editing and communication skills and much easier if a few people work together on it – it doesn’t have to be confined to one state/territory either. Please consider what you or your organization can do to keep this important professional paper going and forward this email to as many people whom you think may be interested.

Recent SAFE newsletters

For further information on producing SAFE please contact angelac@vifm.org

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Request for state manuals/policies

I am writing to you as the Secretary of FAMSACA. An area of interest and need that is regularly raised by members is that of the policies to guide and inform our forensic and clinical practice.

In response, the committee’s asked me to contact you all to request electronic copies of your departmental and agency protocols and policies.

Our thoughts are to put them up on the website. This will allow all members to view these policies, protocols, guidelines from all the jurisdictions. It will no doubt assist us all in our individual practice and also when reviewing, revising or developing  our own documents.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I look forward to your response, I would appreciate it if you could forward any documents you have by the end of March.

Please forward material to Jan Savage before the end of March or contact angelac@vifm.org

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Invitation to Working Groups

The working groups have been established.  Please contact us if you would like to participate on any of the groups or have skills relevant to the work being done.

For further information on working groups please contact angelac@vifm.org

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         Listserver

The listserver is a way members can communicate and ask questions of there peers via email so everyone gets the email and anyone can reply so the whole group gets all communication. It works well if people write in.

I have included instructions below for listserver I may have told you just to write subscribe before it needs to be subscribe famsaca! Good luck.

Your new list has now been created and is ready for your use. The first thing you need to do is to subscribe yourself to the list by sending a command to majordomo. You can simply reply to this message with the following message body:

subscribe famsaca

That is all you need to do to subscribe yourself! All other subscribers also need to send a message to majordomo@lists.health.nsw.gov.au with the same message body.

To send messages to the list you need to send your email to famsaca@lists.health.nsw.gov.au and from there it will be distributed to all list members.

I hope this makes it easier.

Cheers

Mandy Ashton

CNC,  Sexual Assault Forensic & Medical Services Level 2 Admin Building Blacktown Hospital

Ph 98817752 Mandy_Ashton@wsahs.nsw.gov.au

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Staff Specialist in Sexual Assault Medicine

Population Health & Planning - Sexual Assault - Wollongong

Temporary Full Time for 12 months with the possibility of extension

Ref No: 91169

Fellowship of the Australasian Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine (RACP) or nearing completion of training or MBBS with Master of Forensic Medicine and/or other specialist recognition as provided for in the Staff Specialist (State) Award.

This position is responsible for clinical service provision and clinical supervision of nurses, general practitioners and junior medical staff involved in the provision of forensic and follow-up services for sexual assault, with a limited role in clinical services for sexual health, primarily in the southern network with potential to assist services in the central and northern networks if required. The position will also support the development and implementation of child sexual assault services in Aboriginal communities for the Shoalhaven.

Enq: Katherine Brown, 4276 2399, katherine.brown@sesiahs.health.nsw.gov.au

Closing Date: 8 August 2008

 

 

Queensland Government                    Senior Medical Officer (Clinical Forensic Medicine) Senior Medical Officer (Vocational Practitioner) Senior Medical Officer

Contact Details: Dr Cathy Lincoln                                                  Clinical Forensic Medicine Unit Suite 1807, Level 8, Southport Central, 56 Scarborough St Southport Qld 4215 Ph    5509 7270 Fax   5532 8657

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