May 15, 2014

PSS’ New Directors

Rachael Stott: Director of Business Development and Innovation

I’m hugely excited to take on this new role and help to change our approach to growth and sustainability. Having a Directorate for Business Development and Innovation really helps us to show our commitment to our vision but also helps us become more ambitious and ultimately impact more lives. Working closely with Chris will mean we know more about what the people who use (or have potential to use) our services want from them. We’ll therefore have a much stronger process for making this happen by modernising and adapting what we currently do with the support of Pam Stopforth and ensuring that we get across to those people buying our services what makes us different and why they should choose PSS.

In the jobs I had before PSS I was focused on Business Development as well as communications and I must say although I love communications I have missed getting out there and meeting commissioners and seeing where there are opportunities for us. We want to know what’s got the best reviews, what meets our needs (sometimes those we didn’t even know we had) and which is going to be the most cost effective in terms of getting us the outcome we want. If we know what people want and focus our energies on making our services meet these needs in a cost effective way we’ll not need to sell them, they’ll sell themselves.

How is it different to what you used to do?

My previous role was really focused around the Communications side of what we do, the telling people who we are and why we’re great. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone over the last couple of years completing the rebrand and improving how we communicate internally and externally but one gap for me has always been around focusing our messages. We do so many different things that trying to promote 25 plus services across the UK on an ongoing basis is not only confusing to the person receiving our messages but also more or less impossible!

In my new role I’ll be doing a wider ‘marketing’ job which (and I love to challenge this preconception!) doesn’t mean just advertising but finding out what people want, working with Ops to make this happen and then promoting the end result to those who need it. Of course communications is still central, we’ve got to get the message of how great we are across still, but all the stuff that comes before that will be fine-tuned to ensure clarity and focus.

How will this affect/change PSS?

One thing that’s always challenged me is that although we are amazing at so many things our offer is really difficult to describe. What we need to do now is say to the marketplace ‘we’re not a specialist in mental health or learning disabilities or supported living or troubled families we’re a specialist because we’re not a specialist’. So what the heck do I mean by that? Well we’re different because we can meet a single person’s needs in many different ways. Key to that is cross-service working so that we’re all working together to add value.

Lots of this has been going on and it’s amazing, we just need to formalise it more in terms of what we’re directly offering to commissioners and the people who are using our services so that they go ‘wow they really have thought of everything’. New models around integrated social care and health commissioning mean this is a great time to develop this focus; hopefully it’ll really help us stand out.

Ultimately we need to become more enterprising to go out there and (like organisations who are truly commercial) find the gap and we find a way to help.

CHRIS BARKER: Director of Services

Tell us about your new role?

I’m really thrilled to be in the role of Director of Services, which is a new post that has been introduced following our Fit for the Future restructure. Now we’ve created our new directorate of Business Development and Innovation it means that in the Operations directorate we can focus on making sure that our teams are well supported to deliver high quality services and positive outcomes for the people who use them. In my new role I have overall responsibility for the successful delivery of all our UK services. It’s a challenge I’m well up for – and I’m lucky in having a fantastic operational management team around me and committed front line staff throughout PSS.

How is it different to what you used to do?

I’ve been with PSS for two years as Head of Operations (England) and have deputised for Paul Harris, our previous Director of Operations. So in some ways my new role feels very familiar. However, I’ve joined the Leadership Team, which is a big change, and I’m really enjoying working with Lesley and the team at a time when we have so many opportunities and challenges ahead of us.

The major difference is that my focus can now be on making sure we continue to deliver services that are excellent and great value for money. In my previous role I was also involved in the business development side of things and I wasn’t able to get out and about to visit services as much as I wanted to. This is really going to change and in the coming weeks and months I’ll be spending time with services across Scotland, England and Wales.

I want to meet and get to know staff teams and our Shared Lives Carers to fully understand how their services work, what their jobs are like and what their issues and concerns may be.

How will this affect/change PSS?

A key reason for creating the new directorate was to help us put the right amount of time and energy into delivering high quality services whilst achieving our ambitions to innovate and grow. With Rachael Stott heading up the new directorate, and me leading on operational matters, we have much more capacity to position PSS so that we can sustain our current services and win new contracts. Rachael and I are working closely together and she’s already supporting our Heads of Service and Service Managers with activity linked to business development and innovation.

I can honestly say that, although we are only a few weeks into our new ways of working, we’re already seeing how much more we can achieve with a more focused approach. All the changes we’ve been going through have been very hard but I firmly believe that we’re going to emerge stronger. This will ultimately be for the benefit of all the people who use PSS services.