April 2009
As I write this I am not sure what I should be worrying about most as the chief executive of a small to medium sized charity. Should I be worrying about the global economic problems and how they are manifested here in the United Kingdom and in particular on the services that we are paid to deliver? Or should I be worrying about the possible impact of the pandemic flu and how it will affect our services and users and what actions we should be taking to prepare the Trust to reduce the impact as far as possible.
As I write this I am not sure what I should be worrying about most as the chief executive of a small to medium sized charity. Should I be worrying about the global economic problems and how they are manifested here in the United Kingdom and in particular on the services that we are paid to deliver? Or should I be worrying about the possible impact of the pandemic flu and how it will affect our services and users and what actions we should be taking to prepare the Trust to reduce the impact as far as possible.
The issue about the global economic problems and how it is manifested here in Maghull is that pressures on the government, the bank bail outs, mean that there is less money for the public services. Clearly we are not public services as such. But the Local Authority does pay the Trust fees for people to access those services. The uplifts that we are receiving this year are very modest. The impact of this is that it limits what we can pay our staff. These staff are not paid highly, this therefore is a political issue. It needs political will to commit resources to pay a wage that truly values their contribution to ensuring that vulnerable and frail people are supported and cared for. Not paying a decent wage reflects on the priority that government affords such carers and service users they support, whether older people, people with dementia or people with physical and learning disabilities. The current economic climate serves only to exacerbate this situation.
In considering the other worry, it seems a fine line between being prepared but not generating panic amongst our staff and service users which can be debilitating and only serve to divert attention from constructive action. The Trust has convened our contingency team and will now be meeting on a weekly basis to plan and prepare so we are as ready as we can be to mitigate any impact on our services.
A challenging time for us all!
Hilary Rowland
