Securing our Future

So here we are in the third week of the significant government enforced restrictions. I am not personally a fan of the term “lockdown”, it sounds like something which is being done as a form of punishment rather than protection. But as the days turn into weeks it is increasingly challenging to maintain enthusiasm, even for me with my ability to usually place a positive spin on most things. I am quite fortunate that I missed the first week of the restrictions within the workplace as I moved house, which in itself showed the level of impact the virus had on our day to day life mostly through the fact I could drive the North Circular with little to no traffic.

As everything seems to revolve around Covid-19, restrictions and a lack of toilet paper/pasta, I thought to buck the trend I would update you on some of the more interesting and exciting things going on. Obviously this is not something I am doing in isolation, very few things are, but they are outside of our business as “usual”!

• We received notification that we had been successful in a short turnaround tender within Ealing, which will enable us to expand our services with regards to general Housing Related Support. I am incredibly excited about this given that homelessness is something very close to my heart due to my own lived experience.
• Brook Drive is shortly to be used to support NHS Guys and St Thomas hospital to allow them to allocate more spaces within their acute beds. This is a hugely important piece of work, done in a very short turnaround, and it will be continually evolving with support of our clinical colleagues within the hospital and Villa Street.
• Mobilising a 21-bed residential service in Enfield for patients moving from medium secure units, generally for extensive periods of time. This is the first service of its type within the area, so it will be something to be celebrated when it goes live later in the summer.

The reason I wanted to focus on these three individual work streams is to show that we are still plugging away at securing all our futures, strengthening what we already do and bringing on new appropriate areas of growth. It might be worth reflecting on the fact that over the last few months my team (mostly Dale, sorry!) have had to mobilise four different projects, which is an impressive success rate by anybody’s standard. Just because we are changing the way in which work should not stop us from still achieving the best thing for our communities and each other.

Stay safe, stay well and stay connected.

Darren Kelso, Director of Operations