Making a difference

“I want to make a difference” is often what candidates answer when asked at interview why they would want to join public services. I am sure that that was part of my answer when I first applied for a temporary admin job in local government back in the 70s, and it was certainly still one of my motivations for applying to be Chief Executive in Brighton & Hove. Yesterday, we held the winter’s Big Difference Awards presentation. Once again we had received a good number of applications for the team award and a slightly smaller number for the individual awards. Three teams ended up being shortlisted.  Firstly, Sensible on Strength, a campaign led by Sarah Cornell and Donna Lynsdale. This is an initiative started by Donna herself who wanted to do something about the high strength beers being sold to street drinkers. From this personal concern a successful campaign has been produced which has got amazing buy-in from local wholesale traders and has been turned into an accredited scheme; Sensible on Strength.

The next nomination was the Housing Needs Services team and their Housing Options manager, Justine Harris with Michael Rose and Debra O’Donovan. This team was nominated for working with some of the most vulnerable and challenging citizens in the city who require homelessness prevention and accommodation. We heard some heartfelt testimonies from individuals who had used the housing advice and accommodation service, and whose lives had been improved dramatically.  

The third team nominated was the Patcham Flooding team who established the Hub in the Pub during the recent bad weather and worked with local citizens to prepare for flooding, and in one case to move a vulnerable resident. This team which comprised officers from Civil Contingencies, Social Care; Transport as well as those from other agencies and local residents were recognised by citizens locally to have had a fantastic impact. Indeed, I remember telling you about it when the Leader Jason Kitcat and I visited Patcham at the height of the rains. This was the team who won the Team Big Difference Award this time, and everyone in the room agreed that they won it on merit. Many congratulations to Robin Humphries, Paul Stanford, Louise Beecher, Corinna Allen, Jake Barlow, Mike Moon, Tim Nichols, Jeff Elliot, Maggie Moran, Kim Philpott, Marnie Naylor, Laura Scott-Smith, James Crane and Annie Sparks.

All three of the teams had demonstrably made a big difference and it was difficult to have to choose. One of the reasons why the Patcham team won was the fact that it was an across council team working with other agencies, and in partnership with citizens in a really co-operative and co-productive way.  I was delighted that the Leader Jason Kitcat was able to be at the presentation and to hear the stories from all of the teams and individuals and to offer his congratulations as well.

The individual nominations were no less impressive. Unfortunately Karen Stacey, a senior care officer in Learning Disabilities services, was unable to join us. She had been nominated by her team members for working hard to make sure a move of three residence service users went smoothly. This had involved enormous personal impact and indeed she put her honeymoon on hold because of the move!  We learnt that Karen often came in on her days off, worked long hours in order to meet deadlines and achieved a move which was made as smooth as possible for the residents. Her commitment and tenacity shone through. The second nominee for the individual award was Les Vickers, the adult social care payments team manager. In Les’ case he had worked tirelessly against all odds to get the adult social care electronic finance system in place ready to go live this April. As well as dealing with programming problems, having a dislocated elbow and working through the pain, undertaking long hours and work outside of work hours, during evenings and weekends, Les remained cheerful and positive. He hit the deadline with only an hour to spare! Les was the individual winner of the Big Difference Award this week and congratulations go to him. It’s encouraging to pay tribute to someone who is both in a managerial role and in what might be seen as a “back office” function. Those of you who have heard me talk of this know that for me the front line is vertical as well as horizontal. Nobody is able to provide a frontline service without fantastic support behind them from finance, IT, HR and administrative functions. Too often we only value those who carry out the face to face contact with citizens and customers and forget all those who work tirelessly to support them. Les Vickers is an example of one of those people whose actions have both introduced improved efficiency to the council and an improved service to adult social care clients and their independent providers of home care.

Congratulations to all those who were nominated and to the worthy winners of this time’s Big Difference Awards. I do hope through our individual end of year meetings to discuss our performance with our managers, that there will be opportunities to celebrate success and achievement and the difference that we’ve all made. Of course I also hope that there will be some reflection on learning and improvements we can make for the next period.

Finally, following my very productive meeting with our two principal social workers for adults and children earlier this week, I contacted Annie Hudson, the Chief Executive of the College of Social Work to invite her to come to a celebration we will plan for the Autumn. This will coincide with us taking corporate membership of the College of Social Work for the benefit of all our social workers across the city. I am delighted to say that Annie has accepted and that we will start planning the event very soon.

I do hope you all get the chance of some sunshine this weekend to help sustain you in your efforts to make a big difference for the residents of Brighton & Hove and to enjoy yourselves.

Best wishes

Penny