Social Enterprise 3

SANDWELL COMMUNITY CARING TRUST

15-03-2008

Sandwell Community Caring Trust attracts annual headlines when it’s featured in the Sunday Times list of the Best 100 Companies to work for. But as Chief Executive Geoff Walker explains, it’s pretty good for its clients too.

Sandwell Community Caring Trust (SCCT), established in 1997, provides residential, respite and day care services for adults and children. It is a company limited by guarantee and registered charity, and according to The Sunday Times, one of the best companies to work for in the UK.

The Trust was originally set up in an effort to save services from closure when Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council had to reduce its social care budget significantly and a range of highly valued services were in danger of being closed down.

Its initial aims were to provide existing services more cost effectively while improving quality, provide well-remunerated and stable employment for former council employees, find alternative sources of capital funding for the replacement of poor quality care homes, and develop new flexible services.

The decision was made to register as a charity, both for tax reasons and to access grant funding for capital investment. It also provided reassurance that that any profits would be retained in the Trust for the development of future services.

82 Staff were transferred from Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council across to SCCT, and the Trust was given a five-year contract, worth £1.2m a year to provide services to 65 people on behalf of the council.

Over the following 10 years the Trust proved itself capable of improving the performance of previously council run services, and its success led to other services being transferred across and the development of a range of services from scratch. As a result, the Trust has expanded its range of services to include daycare, respite care, and supported living for children and adults with physical and learning disabilities.

Today it contracts with both Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, employs around 320 people, and has an annual turnover of £9million.

SCCT is committed to providing high quality, user-focused care at a lower cost than in-house local authority provision, without compromising its standards. By cutting management costs, it has been able to increase the percentage of its turnover spent directly on front-line care from 62% in 1997 to over 82% in 2006.

It has also made significant efforts were made to shift the culture of the organisation towards an open and empowering environment in which staff were valued and supported, enabling the Trust to recruit and, crucially, retain staff with the right kind of personal qualities.

It has gained Investor in People status, and its efforts have made a positive impact, resulting in a dramatic reduction in staff sickness levels and staff turnover which is now below 4%, enabling the company to invest more resources in long-term staff training and development. This success has been recognised as the Trust came second in the ‘2007 Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to Work For’.

As well as ensuring staff satisfaction, we also carefully monitor user experience to ensure that we deliver the best services possible. We are also keen to ensure that the company has a positive impact on the local economy by ensuring that 85% of income spent on salaries and wages remains in the local community.

Outside of its locality SCCT is in the early stages of exploring how other communities can be assisted to replicate its model. The overall aim is to create a network of individual units, each separately managed, with an independent board deciding on how surpluses are invested locally, but ultimately responsible to the main Board of trustees.

www.sandwellcct.org.uk