Over the
last few months Surrey County Council has been going through a Business
Delivery Review, which unfortunately has led to some voluntary sector
organisation in Surrey losing their funding or having their level
of funding reduced. As part of this review SILC was required by Surrey
County Council to reduce its budget by nearly £100,000 a year.
In September
the Trustees of SILC agreed that the best way to respond to this situation
and ensure that Direct Payment services remained with an organisation
run by disabled people was to conduct its own internal review.
In order
to do this a team of consultants led by one of SILC’s trustees
was commissioned to undertake a full review of SILC’s operational
structure, policies, procedures and systems. After working quietly
and thoroughly over the last three months I am delighted to say SILC
has managed to secure its contract with Surrey County Council to provide
information, advice and support services to Direct Payment Users until
at least March 2009.
Unfortunately
as a result of this review and the subsequent changes to the SILC
infrastructure we have had to lose the services of Jack Lafferty,
a long standing Direct Payments Advisor and Melanie Petrie our Direct
Payments Team Leader. David Willett our previous Director had already
resigned prior to the review taking place. Other changes have included
the revision of many of our internal systems and the creation of different
roles for some of the remaining SILC staff.
We are
now in the process of embedding the changes we have made. We are sure
that these changes, along with working in close partnership with Surrey
County Council will enable SILC to continue to provide a high quality
service to Direct Payment users as well as developing additional innovative
services to promote and support all aspects of independent living
within Surrey.
As Chair
of the organisation I would like to thank all those involved in the
review and in particular the staff team of SILC for continuing to
work so hard through what has been a difficult time for us all.
Brenda
Griffiths
Chairperson
