The successful award of the supported accommodation contracts for Oxfordshire brought with it both rewards and challenges for the organisation.  Response’s innovative partnership with Oxfordshire Mind was instrumental in allowing us to jointly tender for services and illustrate how we could streamline the pathway for people within mental health services.  Nowhere has this been more evident than in our joint referral and assessment process.

However, with the award of the contracts came the challenge of decreased funding which meant that we had to undertake a substantial organisational change agenda in order to satisfy both legal requirements under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) and to enter a period of formal consultation in respect of restructuring the organisation to reflect the overall decrease in the level of funding available.

The whole process of organisational change was obviously worrying for staff and it is testament to their professionalism and commitment that services continued so effectively during this period of transition.

Unfortunately we did have to make a number of redundancies but as a result of managing the process and the timescale, we were able to keep the impact to a minimum and the overall numbers were much lower than we had originally feared.  However it did mean that some staff had to leave the organisation and we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge this and thank them for their time they spent working with us.

Now that the process is complete, we are looking forward to a period of more stability as we look to the future and continue to develop the staff and the services we deliver.