About Us
Blackwood Homes and Care was founded in 1972 by Dr Margaret Blackwood MBE, a pioneering campaigner for the rights and independence of disabled people. Her vision was centred on enabling independent living through better financial support and housing that truly met people’s needs.
More than fifty years later, we remain committed to that same vision. Today, Blackwood helps people live life to the full by providing high-quality accessible housing, personalised care, and tailored support for people with a wide range of needs.
What sets Blackwood apart is our unique combination of both housing and care. Not all of our customers receive both services, but the expertise we have developed in each area strengthens the quality, flexibility, and innovation of the support we provide.
We are also recognised for our forward-thinking approach to independent living. In housing, we have invested in the design of beautiful, accessible homes that combine modern construction with inclusive technology. In care, we provide a 24/7 digital support service and CleverCogs™, our award-winning personalised platform that helps people stay connected, manage their care, and live more independently, whether in their own home or in a Blackwood development.
Independence is not about being alone. It is about having choice, control and support when you need it.
Margaret Blackwood
Why We Need a Business Plan
The Plan sets out our vision for the future and the actions that we need to strengthen our financial position, reduce operational volatility, and deliver high quality services for our customers. It identifies any risks that we may face and considers how we manage those as well as providing a framework to monitor and measure our success.
Help people live life to the full through good quality landlord and care services.
A Phased Approach
We will approach the delivery of this Plan in two distinct phases as follows;
1. Strengthening our foundation
This critical work is key to meeting regulatory requirements, regaining compliance, and improving services for our customers.
2. Developing our services
This medium-term work, though not financially viable early on, builds on our innovation to deliver long-term value through partnerships benefiting current and future customers
Delivering our Plan
Our Customers: Create a Positive Experience for our Customers
We will put our customers first, improving the ways that customers can engage with us and participate, to seek more frequent customer feedback which will be the basis of our improvement programmes and the development of new services. Listening to our customers, we will ensure that our organisation is the best that it can be for them.
Provide a seamless customer experience on first contact
Better understand our customer journey
Improve customer satisfaction with keeping them informed
Increase customer participation and empowerment
Develop robust customer scrutiny panels
Our People: Invest in our People
Our people are critical to our success. We will empower a thriving and inclusive community of Blackwood people by prioritising and recognising talent development, diversity and wellbeing. Listening to our staff, we will ensure that our organisation is the best that it can be for them.
Better understand our staff engagement levels
Increase employee voice and participation
Improve management capability and performance
Review organisational values
Develop a recognition and reward programme
Our Services: Deliver Quality Housing and Care Services
We will provide housing and care services that continually improve, that are recognised by our customers and the sector that we work in for being high quality, high performing and leading the way in supporting people to live independently.
Maximise rental income
Implement the Shared Houses Delivery Plan
Fairness in the structure
Agree the future direction and priorities for our care homes
Strengthen financial resilience within Care at Home services
Grow our digital support service
Review the CleverCogs offer TM
Our Homes: Provide Affordable, Safe and Well-Maintained Homes
Providing our customers with safe, affordable and comfortable homes is our priority and we recognise that our customers told us that the upkeep of our homes needs to be at the centre of our delivery over the coming years. We want Blackwood homes to attract customers because they want to live there, not because they must.
Deliver a high-quality, tenant-focused repairs service
Review Asset Management Strategy
Deliver a responsive and person-centred adaptations service
Develop a New Build Development Plan
Develop our approach to environmental sustainability
Our Resources: Ensure Strong Financial Management, Performance and Governance
For Blackwood good leadership and governance is good business. Our intention is to return Blackwood to regulatory compliance during the first year of this Plan through demonstrating and maintaining high standards, and to strengthen our financial management, performance and our governance arrangements to ensure that we are organisationally resilient and fit for the future.
Achieve regulatory compliance
Identify areas for gaining value for money across the business
Improve data and insights for decision making
Launch the Blackwood Blueprint for Independent Living
Monitoring & Review
The Board and the Senior Management Team are responsible for ensuring not only that we have a robust Plan in place, but more importantly, that the Plan is being delivered as intended and is making a positive impact for customers.
We will have service delivery plans which will set out how we intend to deliver this Business Plan.
As part of the development of this Plan the Board have set critical success factors. These factors focus us on what must be done well for us to succeed and will form part of our ongoing progress reporting to the Board and Committee.
Critical Success Factors
1. Achieve and maintain regulatory compliance with SHR
2. Maintain and improve Care Inspectorate grades across all services
3. Improved customer satisfaction
4. Increased customer engagement in the development of our services
5. Improvement in staff engagement
6. Sustained delivery of operating surplus
7. Improved voids and arrears performance
8. Growth in the digital support service (formerly 24/7)
9. Full implementation of the shared houses plan
In addition to the critical success factors , we will also measure and report on metrics through our balanced scorecard. This sets out business metrics across four themes of finance, customer, Internal Processes and People, and focuses us on measuring performance in achieving our Strategic Objectives
