Opening the door to independent living
8
received excellent reviews and serves
as an additional marketing tool to
compliment the array of material
produced by our marketing manager,
Caroline Clay. Indeed, I believe we are
the first company in the independent
living field to develop this technology.
Earlier this year, we entered into a
partnership with KIDS, a national
charity specialising in working with
children with disabilities and their
families. Partnership working is an
excellent way of providing specialist
services as it promotes best practice,
information sharing and is cost
effective. The partnership has already
contributed to successful bids and we
look forward to working together with
KIDS in the future.
The number of people accessing
services such as Third Party
Supported Accounts and
appointeeships continues to grow.
These two services are designed to
help less able or vulnerable individuals
to maintain their independence whilst
avoiding some of the more
complicated financial tasks required as
part of everyday life. However, both
services require considerable input
from field and finance staff alike and
are closely managed by senior staff.
Our finance manager, John Brown,
has considerable input into this service
in addition to his responsibilities for the
day to day operation and overview of
our finances.
Our Payroll Bureau also provides more
than a basic service as staff inform,
alert and discuss a comprehensive
range of payroll issues with
employers and their staff, thereby
making the responsibility of being an
employer less onerous. This service
is yet another excellent example of a
stream-lined and efficient operation,
with thousands of payslips being
produced on a weekly basis. Staff are
to be congratulated for the continued
development and improvement of this
essential service.
One of our greatest challenges this
year has been the provision of HR
support to all of our staff. TUPE
transfers, staff induction and training,
redundancies, welfare support and
other staff issues take a huge amount
of time and resources. As a result our
HR manager, Deborah Burrows, has
been extremely busy. My thanks go to
her for her professionalism and
dedication in sometimes stressful
circumstances.
But many of the challenges we have
faced in the past 12 months would
have been more difficult without the
support of our administrative staff,
both nationally and at our head office.
The administrative team has also had
to make significant changes. The
aforementioned database was largely
developed by Ais Reynolds,
administrative manager, in
partnership with an external company.
This will benefit not only the team but
the company as a whole enabling us
to record an increasing amount of
helpful data in addition to assisting us
with predicting future trends.