New Leadership Structure

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Adult Health and Social Care e-Bulletin 

Alexis Chappell, Director of Adult Health & Social Care

Dear all,

I would like to take this opportunity firstly to thank everyone across Adult Health and Social Care for your continued excellent service to the people we support, their families and each other.

I’m writing to update you about a some changes in the Adult Health & Social Care Leadership Structure.

During January and February, I have been working with and consulting Heads of Service about the Adult Health & Social Care Leadership Team structure.  I am making these changes to best set us up for the future, after listening carefully to you and others over the last year.

We have now completed a formal change process, which sets out a new structure.  I believe this is a crucial step in improving both our support to you, and for the care for the people of Sheffield.

What is the new structure?

The new leadership team will consists of 7 posts.  All posts will be line managed by the Director of Adult Health & Social Care. 

Simon Richards will retire as part of this process and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Simon for all his support to the service and to wish Simon all the very best.

This restructure will make roughly a £30k saving per year, which will contribute to the Council’s financial stability. 

My intention is that this new structure enables us to deliver on this ambition, strengthen our ability to deliver on our change programme and enable us to end inequalities, prevent and reduce need for care and support and maximise opportunities for adults and their unpaid carers to live independently, well and safely so that they can live life the way they want to live in their local communities across Sheffield.

Why do we need a new leadership structure?

Since the current leadership team structure was put in place, there have been significant changes in the People Portfolio’s structures and across the wider health and social care sector.  There is also a far reaching change programme initiated and learnings from our listening exercise with the citizens of Sheffield and our self-assessment exercise last year.  

A refreshed structure is required to meet the opportunities and challenges these represent, which includes the move of adult commissioning, business planning and business support to adult social care last year, a move towards bringing back direct line management of mental health to Sheffield City Council and a changing operating context.

What next?

The key next steps are:

• Discuss the leadership changes with staff, March 2022
• Confirm transitionary arrangements, March 2022
• Collectively complete operating model design, Spring 2022
• Start implementing new operating model, including aligning structures with completion by Autumn 2022

There will be a transitionary period for the leadership team into their new roles, to enable us to get the design right. We will talk to you more about the specifics of this in the coming weeks.

I want to emphasise that we don’t have a design for the next stage of the restructure yet.  This will be designed as part the Operating Model work in our change programme, which has representatives involved from each of our services along with trade union representatives, and is informed by our wider operating and strategic context and the people we support and their families.

Thank you to those who have contributed so far, including the avoidable demand identification work. The next stage of this work is the way we will design our future model structures, and there will be plenty of opportunity to contribute to this. This includes an update and chance to contribute at the staff event on 10^th March.

What else might I want to know?

These changes will of course bring lots of thoughts and questions and to support an open discussion with you I intend to hold a number of sessions throughout March to provide an opportunity for engagement with you about these changes.

Its important for you to know that I am committed to using the operating model, models of care and strategy work to inform our future redesign of adult health and social care so that you, the citizens of Sheffield and our partners inform the shape of adult health and social care for the future.

In advance of the open sessions, I know that you will have some questions and my aim is to collate these at our service event on Wednesday 10^th March 2022.

As part of the change programme and next steps my aim is to provide a generic email address for you to provide your questions to, so that we record and respond to you in the best way. 

I hope this update is useful. I feel this is an important step in our journey forward, and hope you feel this way too. As always, I’m always happy to receive queries and contributions.  If you have any immediate questions, please either feed them through your manager or email into ahsccomms@sheffield.gov.uk and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on 10^th March and at our open discussion and engagement sessions.

Best wishes,

Alexis