sandra whiting: rotherham council

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– I’m Sandy Whiting.

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I’m a Programme Lead

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for Occupational Therapy
and Assistive Technology

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in Rotherham Council.

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My role is based in joint commissioning,

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so I’m sort of between the
Health CCG and the council,

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so I have sort of a foot in
different camps with that.

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So, it was a new post when I came into it.

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It was created just to try and take

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the assistive technology, or
care technologies, forward.

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I think we were finding

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that things weren’t movin’ as
quickly as we’d like them to,

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and I think we wanted to look at

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how we accelerated the programme really

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and got people involved
to take things forward.

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We’d had sort of, with the pandemic,

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it had actually taken the focus

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a little bit away from the programme.

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People were so busy
with other sort of work

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that they were doin’

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and just getting through

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that sort of day-to-day pressure, really.

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So we wanted to sort of
reinvigorate the programme,

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and sort of

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make sure that it was a
focus for the council.

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I think it, we always had quite
a big ambition in Rotherham,

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to do something with care
technologies and take it forward,

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and I think it’s been picked
up several times in the past,

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and it’s always become too big to manage.

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It’s quite a wide sort of scope, isn’t it?

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I think what we haven’t got
is the people’s awareness

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to actually use that
equipment that we’ve got

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or to think creatively about
what might help someone

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to be more independent in their own home.

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So, very much that feeling

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that we needed to get
the message out there

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to existing staff, really.

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The original thing is sort of
across our own directorate,

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but also we’re very aware

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that we need to sort of
do that across place,

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so to sort of also involve

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sort of health and other
providers in our area

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to make sure that people are aware

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of what technologies can offer people.

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It’s made us totally rethink
what we are doin’ to be honest.

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It’s,

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we started out sort of thinkin’

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that we’d got a roadmap

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of sort of the key areas
that we wanted to work on,

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sort of around the time that
we came into the programme.

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We’d got a structure in place,

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whereby we’ve got an assistive
technology strategy meetin’,

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so that was where we fed things into,

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and that was led by our Associate
Director for Social Care.

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So we thought we sort of had
everything in place in a way,

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but the more we spoke to people,

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the more we sort of, in our two-to-ones,

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I think, they really focused us on

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spending some time on this
outside of this programme as well.

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So, we set up regular meetings,

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myself and my senior manager,

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outside of that,

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and I think that time just
to talk about technology

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really helped us to sort of focus on

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what we wanted from the programme

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and what we need to do going forward.

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And I think the Communities of Practise,

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because we could both hear
what other areas are doin’,

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some in a similar position to us

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and some sort of further on,

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really gave us sort of a
view of how things could work

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and what was effective.

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We made a lot of links from there,

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and I had sort of individual conversations

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with a few people outside of that.

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And some people,

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that Irene from Regent
Partners sort of recommended

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that might be useful,

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so we made some contacts with people

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who were doin’ things a bit differently.

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And that, and we were
able to focus, I think,

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through our discussions with Irene,

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around the fact that

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the current structure
wasn’t working for us.

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We often weren’t gettin’
decisions made that we needed,

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so things were takin’ a lot
longer than they needed to.

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Because of priorities,

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people weren’t always attendin’
the strategy meetings,

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so it was around that and how we wanted

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to really enable us to
take it forward, so.

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We’re almost in a little
bit of a flux at the minute,

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because we’re rethinkin’ that whole thing,

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but I think it was really
necessary to deal with that.

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And I think what we’ve decided is,

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that we’ve made
connections corporately now

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with the digital leads within the council,

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so that’s sort of given us

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a little bit more support

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and sort of development
opportunities I think within that,

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by makin’ those links.

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They were really interested
in what we were doin’,

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and we’ve now got regular
meetings set with them

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going forward,

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so that should help us with the programme.

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And then it was around trying
to give this some priority,

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so I think we’re going to rethink

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that whole assistive
technology strategy meetin’

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that we had in place.

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And we haven’t decided yet,

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but we’re lookin’ at possibilities

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of sort of making it more of a board,

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so we’ve got the right
people in the right place

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with the right sort of abilities

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to make those decisions that we need to do

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to take things forward.

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So, yeah, I think it’s quite excitin’.

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It’s sort of got us to that
place a lot quicker, I think,

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than we would’ve done on our own,

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even if we would’ve done
on our own, I don’t know.

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But that, bein’ able to
talk to other people,

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has been sort of really useful,

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so the Communities of
Practise, both of them,

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’cause I know Ian got a lot out of his.

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It’s been really useful, and yeah, but.

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I’ve sort of discussed,
outside of that as well,

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some people are in a very similar position

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to where I sort of was,

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so I hope we’ve been able to
sort of support other people

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as well as learnin’ a
lot from the process, so.

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Yes, it’s sort of really made
us rethink what we were doin’.