Thursday 25 June 2009

I wanted to reflect on our customers this week. The first Cabinet of the new council was held on Tuesday. There was a presentation by the Chief Executive outlining the challenges ahead over the next four years. As well as the well documented public sector funding reductions, these include the need for us to change the culture of our organisation - essentially to deliver the contents of the "What will we be Like" documents that we developed on the run up to unitary. This is exciting work as it clearly places the customer at the centre of everything we do. Linked to this is our area working agenda using the new area boards. These will be vital for us as we seek to get closer to the people we serve.

I spent an afternoon in Salisbury this week with the Customer Care team. I sat with Debbie and Nicky listening to calls. I was surprised at how different the demand was from recent visits to Devizes and Trowbridge. Thanks to Liz and the whole team for hosting me and answering all my questions.

It was the Annual Adult Social Care awards event last night, and I just wanted to let you know that not only were individuals and teams within DCS Finance nominated for awards, we actually won 2 (out of 4) of the team awards.

The Financial Assessment & Benefit (FAB) team was nominated for and won the Customer Service award, and the Court of Protection Team was nominated for and won the Keeping People Safe award. In addition, the Data Migration team, which has been instrumental in implementing SAP and getting all the records from FRED (our access data base of care spending) onto Carefirst and SAP, were nominated in the Use of Resources award. Finally, Pete Little was nominated in one of the individual awards for his expert knowledge in a specialist area and the way he always quickly, helpfully and with a sense of humour, responds to requests from the ASC teams. Now that's customer focus - well done Pete!

The awards are judged by an independent panel, which makes this all the more pleasing and I am obviously thrilled that the really good work of the teams has been publicly recognised.

Talk again next week.

Carlton