February 9, 2016
A Year At PSS: Our Annual Report
It is no secret that the 2014/15 financial year has been a challenge for many organisations across the UK and we, like many others, have witnessed ever increasing need, fuelled by significant reductions in health and social care funding. With this in mind we started the year in April 2014 with continued focus on our 5 year strategic plan, placing particular emphasis on those elements that will secure our future through the anticipated challenges ahead.
Our attention has been centred on three core principles; evolution, efficiency and excellence.
Evolution
Like any other year, staying true to our vision was always going to be key in 2014/15. It’s at times like these that making a ‘real difference to people’s lives’ requires creativity that is rooted in experience and knowledge. This year we’ve seen this approach give birth to our newest service, Ruby. Ruby takes the classic principles of working with women who are experiencing domestic violence but does this within a hospital emergency environment allowing need to be addressed as early as possible. This new service allows intervention to take place earlier, reducing both harm to the woman and her family, while simultaneously increasing potential savings for the state by reducing hospital re-attendance and the need for more critical services later on.
Efficiency
Alongside innovation and evolution, we have spent a lot of time this year looking at how we can work in better ways and achieve efficiencies internally to ensure that we are able to maintain our service delivery. A key element of this during 14/15 involved a significant restructure giving us a strong footing as we anticipate further financial pressures over the coming years.
Excellence
Last, but by no means least, we have had a real emphasis on ensuring our services are excellent; we believe the people we support deserve nothing less. This year we’ve enhanced our internal auditing processes, progressed and strengthened service-user inclusion projects, focussed on strengthening our safeguarding systems and procedures and refreshed our feedback processes. We are incredibly proud of the quality of our delivery and I and the rest of the Board know we can only do this because of the dedication, skills and value-base of everybody involved in PSS. We have continued to receive the wonderful support of all of our stakeholders, from our friends and members to our commissioners and service users. We value this hugely and have made every effort to return that support through the manner in which we conduct our business, the services we provide and by constantly seeking means to add value, all of which is in complete alignment with our core principles.
I feel assured that I can speak for the whole PSS team in saying that there is, justifiably, a large amount of pride in our achievements over the last 12 months. My thanks, and those of the rest of the Board, go to each and every member of our team and to all those that continue to support us. We look forward to taking this hard-work forward and building on this solid platform in 2015-16.
Mark Rathbone, PSS Chair
Click here to read our Annual Report 2014/15
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