CHA of BC Professional Members

Professional Insurance Annoucement

“Holman Insurance Brokers Ltd. & the Canadian Herbalists Association of British Columbia have come together & created a very comprehensive & affordable insurance policy for its members. This program is ideal Herbalists & other professions, which offer's an "individual" policy comprising E&O (malpractice or Professional Liability), Herbal remedies coverage, Products Liability and General Liability together as a package each to complement your specific "scope of practice." 

Please view our website www.therapistinsurance.ca  or ask me for the application with rates, limits, options & scope of practice modalities.  We have 90 listed modalities listed, but insure multiple therapies, for no extra cost.  The rates for Herbalists start at $175 for 1,000,000 General Liability & 1,000,000 professional liability coverage.

Other advantages of this policy include:

• Greater range of coverage for the modality of professional practices.  This allows the practitioner to include to their scope of practice 90 other modalities to give them a competitive personal edge in the marketplace
• Portability of Insurance. The coverage allows practitioners to carry the insurance from one location to another, not restricted to one place, or province within Canada .
• Fast and efficient processing time.  72 hours of processing time from the initial application to final approval.
• Coverage not limited to just herbalists, but allied medical practitioner

We also strongly recommend you put our insurance link up to your website & make an announcement in a newsletter about the new collaboration between us

Peter Fetherston

Associate Broker

Peter.Fetherston@holmanins.com 

Holman Insurance Brokers Ltd.

Tel. 905-886-5630  Fax 905-886-5622

 

Website: www.holmanins.com

Specialist website: www.therapistinsurance.ca

 

CHA of BC 2010-2011 Annual Report

We would like to take this opportunity and share with our members some of the projects and challenges that we have been working on during the Fiscal Year June 2010 -- May 2011, and give thanks to the effort and work of all our volunteers:

• 2011 AGM – the Association would like to thank the board of directors and all members that contribute in anyway making this year’s AGM a success. It was wonderful to see and reconnect with all those that attended. Please visit our Board of Directors page to get acquainted with our new board.

Many thanks to Chanchal Cabrera for the great lecture on “Collaborative Approaches to the Management and Treatment of Cancer”

• Membership – We thank all our members who renewed their membership. Congratulations to our two Professional RHT members that participated on the Pledge Ceremony at the AGM: Mary Ann Abbs and Dacrisson Worrel. 

Many thanks to our Corporate members for their sponsorship and support:

• Dominion Herbal College
• UNION NATURE Aroma-Phyto Inc.
• Botanica
• GaiaGarden 
• Ferlow Botanicals
• Padmashri Naturals Inc.

Last, many thanks to Denise Galbraith for all her work looking after memberships and the application process.

• eNewsletter – many thanks to our newsletter editor, Katolen Yardley for all her work, and to all others who contributed to the success of our newsletters this past year. We encourage all members to support Katolen by submitting articles, up-coming events, etc. We would also like to thank in advance anyone that would like to offer some help with its editing and formatting.

• Herbal Medicine Awareness Week (HMAW) – during the past few years, the CHA of BC has been working in establishing the first week of May as HMAW – a week dedicated to raise awareness and promote Herbal Medicine in our communities. Special thanks to Jazz Mattu for all his efforts for keeping HMAW alive; and also to everybody else who contributed to this year's HMAW.

• Promotional Rack-card – for the past few years we have been working on creating a practical and economical promotional material to raise awareness and promote herbalism, our association, and our herbalist members. We have now completed the design of a rack-card with the help from Jazz Mattu. Our herbalist members will be able to add their contact info on these cards and distribute them to their clients, contacts, friends, or place in public places such as stores, libraries, community centres. 

• Website –   At the 2010 AGM we had decided to enhance the website with services accessed via log-in. We soon realized that the enhancement would add a database (increasing the complexity of its maintenance). In order to avoid this, we decided to automated the system as much as possible.

The new website specification (automation and log-in) has been completed. We are now ready to approach website designers for estimates. The association welcomes any of its members to participate in this process.

Many thanks to Julieta Criollo for all her work looking after the website updates, maintenance, and upgrades.

• Canadian Council of Herbal Associations (CCHA) – An ongoing project at the national level. We thank Paula Skalnek, our current representative, for all her time and work with the CCHA. We are currently looking for a second representative for our association, and considering nominations toward this end. Please let us know if you are interested in this position.

• Revision of our Constitution – we just launched this important project to review and implement necessary revisions to our constitution.

• Educational Standard – the CCHA has been developing various standards (code of conduct, code of practice, etc. that could be adapted to each Provincial needs).  The standard of education document will soon become available, and we would like to have a team to review it, and/or revise it if needed, for our Association. We thank Paula Skalnek for her contribution developing these documents at the CCHA level.

• CHA of BC change address -- please make a note of our new mailing address:

  Innisfree Farm
  3636 Trent Road
  Courtenay BC V9N 9R4

• We would like to invite all our members to get involved in active support of the Association by contributing a few hours a month to the diverse projects on hand.

Professional members, please note – the time contributed may be used to earn 'Continuing Education Credit' ( CEC) points (20 CECs are required per year of the professional RHT members and 10 CECs of professional Herbal Advocate members).

The CHA of BC thanks each one of you who has contributed in time, deed and any other way to the tasks of the Association. Special thanks to each one who has served, and is serving on the Board.

Canadian Council of Herbalist Associations (CCHA)

Who is the CCHA?

The CCHA is an organization founded in 2005 representing associations of herbal therapists that unifies, promotes and serves herbal therapists through active communication with the Canadian government in Ottawa , the public, and between all herbalist associations throughout Canada .

Herbalist Associations across Canada elect one or two of its herbalist members from each provincial association to represent them at the CCHA level. The CCHA is composed of these elected herbalists.

Since 2005 the CCHA members annually meet with government natural health product officials in Ottawa annually to make our concerns known, ensure our right to practice our profession, stay on top of upcoming regulatory items and work towards more ideal regulations. The CCHA also continue their work with monthly meetings and phone conference calls. The volunteer time, work behind the scenes and financial expenses of these individuals have been enormous. They are all volunteers. These individuals have been representing our profession in our local communities. These individuals have representing you.

The mandate of the CCHA

• To have herbal therapists recognized as the experts on herbal medicine in Canada
• To facilitate unity among many associations of herbal therapists
• To guide member associations in setting standards (education, practice, ethics, etc).
• To provide a national representation of member associations to the provincial and federal governments in discussions of any and all legislation affecting herbal therapists and legislation of natural health products as it affects herbal therapists.

Some activities of the CCHA:

• Council to develop a consensus position among member associations with regard to federal, provincial and territorial regulatory issues and represent consensus position to federal, provincial and territorial regulatory governments.
• Ongoing annual discussions at the federal government level regarding the Compounding Policy and continued assurance of the professional herbalist’s continued right to compound and prepare medicines for clients (without needing to obtain a government approved site license for manufacturing).
• Ongoing annual discussions at the federal government level and continued assurance of our ability to import our bulk tinctures into Canada without a Good Manufacturing Procedures and a site license.
• Continued confirmation from Ottawa that herbalists have access to all of our medicinal herbs, and no plans exist to restrict this access.
• The council represents member associations that must have standards of practice and grievance procedures such as: code of ethics, code of practice, scope of practice, educational standards and disciplinary procedures. With changing regulations, these details will be necessary for the continued recognition of our profession in Canada . The goal is to complete these documents by the end of 2010 and provide to member associations.

Highlights from the 2009 Annual CCHA Report

• The CCHA spent most of 2009 laying the foundation for the creation of National Scopes of Practice, Codes of conduct, Ethics and Disciplinary procedures. The main objective is to design guidelines that could be used by all traditions of professional herbalists, in Canada . By defining the practice of herbal medicine and setting out good practice guidelines, that honors all traditions, we hope to unify the voice of Professional Herbalists and strengthen our presence locally and nationally. When completed, these documents may be adopted as they are or can serve as templates for the member associations writing their constitutions. The CCHA will be providing member associations with the final documents by the end of 2010.
• We requested confirmation in Ottawa that we still have access to all herbs and asked if NHPD was intending to restrict access to any. They do not plan to restrict access.
• We discussed the Compounding Policy and were informed it is staying the same and no changes are planned.
• Council Meetings will be held by monthly teleconference throughout the next year, with a face to face meeting in October 2010 in Ottawa .

Please join us supporting them with their associated travel expenses. Please mail in your donation today to:

CHA of BC
Innisfree Farm
3636 Trent Road
Courtenay BC V9N 9R4