Welcome to the November blog. It’s been another busy month at Fair Deal with lot’s happening. Here are just some of those things I wanted to share with you:

Care Inspectorate

As you’ll remember from last month’s blog The Care Inspectorate came to do their unannounced inspection visit in October- we are still awaiting the final inspection report but verbal feedback was extremely positive and we should be able to confirm our grades in the next few weeks. In addition to this, the Care Inspectorate will be launching their new Quality Framework for inspecting Housing Support and Support services in the new year. This will inform how they inspect services in the future and will require organisations like Fair Deal to undertake thorough self-evaluations as well as regular inspections. We will provide more information on this in the New Year.

Engagement Sessions

I’ve loved meeting so many new people over the last couple of months and so many of you have given really useful feedback for me to take on board and share with colleagues. In order to try and hear as many views and suggestions as possible and get to know more of you I will be holding small informal sessions in the first quarter of next year. These will be for our staff, the people we support, their families and our other stakeholders. This will hopefully give us a chance to talk about what is working well and discuss suggestions for what you might want to see more of from Fair Deal in the future. Look out for dates and times in the next blog and please do come along for a cuppa, a chat and a chance to get to know each other better- nothing too formal!

December Salary Payment

It is our intention to make Decembers salary payment on the 24th December. Our operational Team Leaders and Business Support Team will work hard to ensure this happens so this may take up some of their time on the week leading up to salary payment.

General Election

As you will be aware there is a General Election on the 12th December. It is important that everyone who is eligible to vote, has access and support to do so if they wish. If anyone requires additional support with this please do get in touch and can I ask all of our staff working in the community to ensure that the people you are working with have access to information and the opportunity to vote if this is something they want to do.

Social Media

Social Media is a great way to share our positive stories and increase our profile. I am very keen that we increase our reach so that we can engage with and assist as many people as possible and share information with our supporters. I would like to ask anyone who is on social media to consider liking and sharing our Fair Deal and Help Yourself Grow facebook pages and perhaps invite those on your friends list to like and share. We have done a bit of this in the last week and our followers have gone from 349 to 673 already! Let’s see if we can get to 1k before the end of the year! If any of you have positive stories or news you think we could share on our page please email amysutherland@fair-deal.org – we are particularly interested to hear from people we support and staff about all the great things you are doing.

If you would like any more information or wish to discuss anything please email me at fionadunwoodie@fair-deal.org