"My new role (Head of Care Supported Housing) will have a base in Hereford but will work with the 3 RSL's & SHYPP (that I used to manage) that are in the West Mercia Housing Group. I will be supporting them in their areas of focus on a variety of pieces of work around Care and Supported Housing (C & SH).
Until now much of our C & SH work in the Group has been good but reasonably uncoordinated at times and we have not been the best at learning between ourselves from all that we are doing well. We do have a good amount of C & SH stock in the Group but, in my view, it has never really had the profile it deserves - in or outside of the Group.
My role will be to work with those that lead on C & SH projects in the Group. I will be there to support them on pieces of work (i.e reviewing sheltered housing we have etc), .bmp)
develop more C & SH business, and then generally coordinate what we are doing even better. I will not have direct responsibility for the delivery of any of the local C & SH work but my role seeks to add capacity to those working locally in assisting them.
My Job Description lays out some of the key aims of the post:
- Work with staff, tenants and leaseholders to ensure that the service provided is efficient, effective and consistent, and to ensure that operational costs represent value for money in a competitive environment.
- Maintain an up-to-date knowledge of national, regional and local policy, strategy, initiatives and funding and disseminate information including making recommendations for appropriate developments in the group.
- Seek opportunities for appropriate growth and expansion in line with the Group’s C & SH strategy.
- Develop and implement a C & SH strategy ensuring specified targets, key indicators and outputs are met.
- Work in partnership with other agencies to ensure the continued success and viability of the Groups C & SH portfolio.
- Investigate opportunities to secure further funding through the establishment/development of training programmes, consultancy work and market good practice that the group is involved in.
In terms of what happens next...........well as this is a new role I have set some clear targets for the next 6 months linked to the main the draft C & SH revised strategy. In the first few months I will be on a steep learning curve of getting to know the C & SH staff & stock we have (and getting to know what is going to need to be a priority for focus), reviewing our systems, paperwork attendance at networks and forums (to see what we can streamline better) and then I will step up the pace in terms of looking at options appraisals on the projects 'on our radar' the most.
Alongside all of this I plan to continue to work on new developments, bid for more C & SH work and focus on being a bit of a conduit (impressive word eh??!!!) for communication for C & SH related issues in the group. Things are moving very fast these days with the likes of Supporting People etc and my role will be to try and stay ahead of the game on some of these issues. To give you just one example there is a lot of information flying around on the Mental Capacity Act at the moment - something we are told could have a significant impact on us all in RSL's. Rather than each of the RSL's needing to find out about this, my role could be to research into this and then brief all staff - giving it a West Mercia focus.
So that's about it before I bore you all!! I'm looking forward to it....lots of challenges but nothing new there!! I plan to meet with all the Boards and then RSL leads on C &SH in the next few weeks and then see others involved in this area of the Group after that"
