Autism Anglia’s Post

Transcript

It's quite involved, but generally at a trustee the board of trustees is in place to cast a a strategic eye. Over the running of the charity. And then you have. Below the Board of of Trustees, you've then got Chief executive and the leadership team who are in responsible for the. The. The day-to-day running we say of the of the charity, so we would also look at the the long term direction of the charity. What provision we need to start? Looking at you know what? For example, we're going to start, need to, we're going to start to to look at the provision that we need to make for some of the people that we support in later life. Time is marching on. You know, we started off as a, as a, as a school and suddenly the children are adults and suddenly those adults are heading into later life. So that needs to be looked up for example. So we need to plan for that. So it's a long term planning of the of the direction of the of the charity really. We used to meet on the 4th floor of the solicitor's office and there was no table, so we all used to sit around in a circle with our notepads on our knees scribbling away, and the meetings would go on till after midnight. Now we're a bit more structured and and we don't like to do it anymore. I can return to my superb chairmanship. Indeed. Funky, yeah. But I also know that we started off as a very small society and now we're a major retail regional player. We have hundreds of employees and looking after many, many dozens of people with autism and you can't do that with just goodwill. You have to be very, very organised and very professional about it. Well setting up a number of different services in the last 27 years and we set up a further education unit buying a property in Kelvedon many years ago. Because those Croft at the time we've become too big. You had a range of children from the age well three up to 19 and so we had to split off the the teenagers and move them down the road a bit. That was, that was a good thing to have done. And then Discraft itself, which was originally an old townhouse and not really suitable as a as a school or a residential home either. We moved lock, stock and barrel here to 8 Ash Green and that was a real highlight. That was an incredible project. I can still remember signing the loan forms for it and give us a lot of zeros on it. And then we have some other services where they've got a diagnostic service. We've had lots of therapists and clinical psychology, all the extra things that we never had available to us when our son was diagnosed. But now as a charity, I think the the what I'm proudest of. Is that we're still here. God. You know, to provided 50 years of of of care to people is I think it's an achievement. That we should, we should all be proud of and we've done that through ups and downs. Recessions, you know, plenty of money being around. No money being around. So yes, I think. Where? We should be proud of them. So yeah, in terms of in terms of achievements, one of the things that should be said is that the that that that school now has a good Ofsted rating and that's. Thanks to Louise and her team who've worked tremendously hard to to ensure that we comply across the board. I think it's a tremendous achievement. With the different regulatory bodies that we answer to, we have to make sure that we get it right every single time. There is no room for slippage. Because we deal with people's lives here, it is that important. Well, it was quite true indeed because the the regulations have changed so much over the years and it's it's so important to to be outward looking all the time to see changes coming down the track and to adjust to them and to to hold everybody to high standards, no doubt about that. No, that's about that because that way we can look after not just the people that we support but also the staff. Because the staff are vital and other stuff are fantastic job from somebody who when he was originally at school was deemed to be. Possibly one of the one of the best attuned coming out at the end, but in his teens he went completely haywire and needed three to one to control him and went through different illnesses. Having him hospitalised with nearly lost him twice. But he came into the staff here and the adult services managed to bring him round again. But he's at the stage now where he can go on holiday and he can enjoy himself. He's calm, he's got activities. His nonverbal, but his quality of life is unbelievable. Yeah. Well, I would point to that and say that that success.