Celebrating Excellence at the ARC Annual General Meeting

Oct 16, 2025

Trustees, government, people supported and services providers celebrating excellence together

ARC NI hosts Annual General Meeting

Every day we like to celebrate excellence and the work that is done to improve the lives of people with a learning disability, autism and other support needs.

ARC is a charity and because of this we have an Annual General Meeting (AGM) every year. An AGM is a yearly meeting where a charity tells everyone what it has done and plans what to do next. It helps people trust the charity because everything is shared and checked.

We share the hosting of an AGM between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Because this allows each country the chance to shout loud and proud about their work in ARC. This year it was the turn of Northern Ireland!

What is an AGM?

An Annual General Meeting (or AGM for short) is like a big yearly team meeting for a charity. And so once a year, all the important people who care about the charity like the board, staff, members, and sometimes supporters get together to:

Talk about what the charity did during the year
Share how money was spent
Check that everything is being done properly
Choose or re-elect leaders like trustees

Our Annual Impact Report explains this in more detail.

What is a Trustee?

A trustee is a person who helps run a charity and makes important decisions. Their job is to make sure the charity is doing the right things to help people and uses money wisely. A Trustee is a volunteer. This means they don’t get paid.

Key Duties of an ARC trustee include:
• Make sure the charity does what it says
• Follow the law
• Take care of the charity
• Keep the charity safe
• Do what is best for the charity
• Work as a team
• Not to make money from being a Trustee

Charities need to have an AGM because it helps keep everything honest, fair, and open. It lets everyone see what is happening and make sure the charity is doing a good job helping people.

Celebrating Excellence in Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland we work with lots of different people. This can include Government, universities, organisations that provide care and support to people and most importantly, people who use services and support.

TILII

Leslie-Anne introduced ARC NI TILII members to the AGM. These are Experts By Experience. TILII talked about the importance of human rights and showed a video of their interview with Danny Donnelly. Danny is a Member of the (). MLAs are elected by, and represent the people of, Northern Ireland. MLAs pass laws and examine policy on transferred matters like health, education, the environment, social work and housing. Danny is looking to introduce a Disability Rights Bill in Northern Ireland.

Department Of Health

Nigel from the Department of Health then talked about the important work that is going on to change and reform services for children and adults with a learning disability, autism and other support needs. There are six key areas which are:

Life Changes (transition)
Health & Wellbeing
Families & Carers
Meaningful Lives
Home
Mental Health

He explained how ARC NI was helping with this by gathering the views of people who use services and support and people who deliver these services.. And Nigel described the important partnership working the Department has had with ARC NI over the past 5 years since Covid.

L’Arche Belfast

And we then ended with our friends at L’Arche Belfast describing what a life in the community looks like for them, how important their home is, how fulfilling having a job is and how good staff support them to lead a full and meaningful life.

Everyone thought the work that was going on in Northern Ireland is exciting and our speakers really helped show the link between legislation to improve human rights, policy to shape future services and the reality of how this impacts people with a learning disability, autism and other support needs.