|
My sincerest apologies to you all my update is long overdue. I can’t believe its summer already – and what a summer is turning out to be! Hopefully this update on the developments of the WISMS social enterprise will be well worth the wait ...
I am pleased to inform you that after considerable support and commitment from Wakefield District PCT and the existing Joint Project Team, we have appointed a Project Manager to support the WISMS social enterprise. Bridget Gill, will be joining us on Wednesday 15th June 2007 and will be based at the WISMS admin office in Grosvenor House, (01924 239339). Bridget will be primarily supporting our social enterprise development and alongside this promote and share learning across other provider services in the PCT who are looking at alternative forms of provision. Bridget comes with considerable personal experience of social enterprise development, including most recently working in the Department of Health’s Social Enterprise Unit in Sue White’s team. Bridget will continue to work in the Social Enterprise Unit at Quarry House one day a week. We will certainly benefit from Bridget’s understanding of the social enterprise model of delivery and of her extensive experience in the NHS. With Bridget’s appointment comes the opportunity to refresh the governance arrangement of the project. Work is underway to establish a Project Board with firm linkages to the PCT. The current Joint Project Team, who have been an invaluable expert resource, will be refreshed with a new membership to reflect the next phase of development. My thanks go out to all those who have met with me, without fail, since February and have been responsible for progress so far. Their legacy is the very foundation of the project. May I congratulate the marketing and branding and financial modelling work-stream leads, both of whom have been successful in accessing learning grants from the West Yorkshire Social Enterprise Link. My thanks to Paula Dennison at WYSE Link for her ongoing support. The funding will assist us to develop and share learning with other local enterprises in health and social care. Teams across WISMS have all been extremely busy and following our successful service improvement planning event all teams have written up their objectives and have corresponding learning and education plans. The plans are soon to be posted on the website so look out for these shortly. Now we have a Project Manager in post, I hope to provide you all with far more regular updates including how you can become involved in shaping service development locally. The Project Manager will also provide regular updates on the progress of the feasibility work that has started that is the focus of her work in the forthcoming months. Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the recent interviews by the Healthskills/Elision consultancy team. The results of the exercise they are conducting alongside our DAT performance indicators will act as a mini ‘health check’ of the services now and start the process of drawing together ideas and aspirations about the future service we wish to work with. We will be publishing the report and feedback on the website and the work will directly feed into a bespoke leadership programme we hope to launch in the autumn. Finally, if you haven’t logged onto the service user part of the WISMS website I would recommend it. The Service User Forum is a group of committed service users from a range of backgrounds who are coming together on a regular basis and taking forward a number of areas of development. Current work-streams include, research, training, involvement in the Treatment Outcomes Profile roll out and involvement in harm reduction initiatives. I had the privilege of being invited to one of their recent meetings and discussed the social enterprise concept with them. I was really impressed by the strength of the agenda and their energy. Thank you all for continuing to support WISMS. Until next time… Linda |
