Comments from Mark LLoyd Our Managing Director “A tremendous amount of positive events are occurring for Avante as we move into the summer. For those of you look at our website you will see our recent success with three significant new tenders. I am delighted we have been chosen as one of only 23 providers in Kent to be a preferred partner for the delivery of domiciliary care. Along with our work in Bexley and Greenwich we now have opportunity to build this business to become a major part of our core work. We have also won two contracts for Stepahead which gives greater security for the future of our young people’s services. These are contracts with Medway for supported housing and for youth services in Shepway, Maidstone, and Thanet. Much of my work at the moment is drafting a new 5 year business plan for the organisation which will address how we respond to the new Care Bill relating to registered care funding. Councils will look to change how they commission with providers so we need to ensure we are well placed to respond to new arrangements as is the case at the present time with Kent County Council who are tendering for preferred providers. At the same time how we assess people in our services to ensure additional support can be provided will be crucial as needs change.
I am really pleased to see the creation of a new professional management group which includes our specialists such as Anne Child, Steve Mason, and Sophie Murray along with senior operational managers. Much of the work of this group will be around building a new philosophy and ethos in how we work within dementia care. The emerging model will see the importance of the care plan as the golden thread in all that we do. It is good to see the reporting in the national news of David Cameron’s pledge to fight the disease of dementia. 800,000 people in the UK now have a diagnoses and the numbers will be set to rise further. The challenge for all of us is not to just see the impact of this terrible condition on the people we support but to remember and see the individual and their life story and look to enable positive daily living outcomes. Since coming into post this April it has been pleasing to see the commitment and professionalism of so many of our staff in delivering services seven days a week. In the coming months I want to focus on how we build the links between our domiciliary care services, provide live in care, offer registered care, and develop end of life care which may be nursing. Getting these relationships right will be crucial in how we build our services. At the same time we will have opportunity to look at developing our specialist Stepahead services in growing our mediation work. We have the opportunity to review our branding and marketing to ensure the public can quickly and easily access our services will be one of immediate priorities in the coming weeks.
Mark LLoyd Managing Director