News

Hello Team Derian, a slightly later weekly update… but better late than never 🙂

 

Here’s your weekly summary, enjoy…..

 

• This week we waved goodbye to Steve who left to pursue an amazing opportunity which involves moving to California…. We wish him all the very best in his new role and re-location.  So what’s going on with IT ??? I hear you all say….. We weren’t expecting Steve to leave so we didn’t have a plan initially but now we do.  Long term we will appoint to the role of IT & Systems Manager, the role will have a wider remit than just supporting us technically, but also over seeing further systems development and overhaul across all areas of the charity including HR, payroll and finance, alongside a plan for us to move to cloud based systems rather than server hosted.  They’ll also review the phones, the wifi, and everything else IT related.  Until then we have our external IT support company – Abbey – on hand to deal with the day to day matters.  If you need any IT support please in the short term contact John Boe, but we’re hoping by next week to have someone from Abbey on site and a dedicated abbey email address for all day to day IT problems.  Any questions please just ask.

 

• We’ve gone live with recruitment campaign for Care staff.  Alongside this we’re creating a recruitment video which I know some of you will have a starring role in, and we hope that it will extend our recruitment reach.  In addition we have 2 maintenance roles advertised.  The Family Engagement Lead JD will hopefully finalised by the end of next week.

 

• As many of you will know we currently have a sunflower (Skyla) resting with us and her family are on site.  Please be mindful when making your way around the hospice.

 

• We’ve had some great feedback regarding our Perinatal Team, the feedback has come through the National Palliative Care Team Nurse, Alex Mancini.  It’s great to hear, well done Katie and Kathryn.

 

• The Care Database implementation is moving forward well, we start trial runs from Monday with a go live date on the 29^th All areas of Care will be fully live by the end of March.  Huge thanks to everyone involved in leading and implementing, it’s been a mammoth task – bigger than we ever thought – but the teamwork has been wonderful to see.

 

• Thanks everyone for doing your annual e-learning, has everyone started ? anyone completed ???? I really need to get some time in my diary to complete.  Seriously though, it is ally important and an indicator with CQC for whether we are well led and safe.

 

• Our first fundraising events of the year have been launched. Dog owners – could your pup be Derian’s Top Dog? If you fancy taking part in our four-legged fundraiser this Feb visit derianhouse.co.uk/events

 

• We’re extremely busy drafting the coming financial year’s budget.  This includes predicting both the income we’ll receive and also the expenditure across the organisation.  The Trustee Board will approve / decline the draft budget at their meeting at the end of February, and then we can share this in March.  We’ll roll out training for key budget holders and also review the financial procedures and sign off levels across leaders.

 

• I’m spending much of my time chasing the commissioners across the 2 ICBs that are within our patch, GM and L&SC.  As soon as I have any updates about statutory funding post March I’ll share the position, and any impact as a direct result.  One of the difficulties in convincing funders about our value has been the issues relating to good quality reliable data, impact measurement data and delivering in line with contracts.  Going forward we will be in a much better position.

 

And finally… Happy Birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear………Abi Conway and Kirsty Blackburn….. happy birthday to you 🙂

 

Have a great weekend everyone

 

 

 

Best wishes   Karen   Karen Edwards OBE Chief Executive Officer   Please note, I am sending this email now as it suits my work pattern, which may not match yours.