Quality Week focus: South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership business support team

This week we are celebrating Quality Week.

In essence, the week is about identifying and creating opportunities for shared learning and continuous development. It is also about excellence, ensuring our services are innovative, efficient and, crucially, safe.

Work like this abounds – and has characterised the overall emergency response to the pandemic.

We asked you to tell us about your work.

Today we focus on South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) business support team. Jacquie Cringles, the HSCP’s business support manager, answered the following three questions. 

Question: What happened before you made changes to service delivery? 

Answer: The partnership business support team based in Almada Street, Hamilton provide a comprehensive administration and support service to the senior management team and senior managers across the professional partnership structure. The integrated team, while always supportive of each other, worked directly to their individual directors and heads of service – reacting to meet the service demands, in a fast-paced demanding environment.

Question: In very concise and simple terms, please tell us what you/the team has done differently to improve the quality of the service delivered. 

Answer: The command and control structure was established, with a number of senior South HSCP staff leading. The team planned a comprehensive loggist support, adapting to this different style of working quickly, continuously reviewing the outputs and the needs, developing and refining improvements such as action logs, risk profiles, document and circulation libraries – all of which are meticulously maintained. This shared knowledge and consistent practice allowed information requests to be managed consistently and effectively. The team were able to adapt this style of working across many other meetings and groups out-with the initial command structure. Many of the managers prefer less formal minutes now and have adapted the comprehensive action log cycle, which is continuously reviewed and adapted accordingly.   

Question: Please provide an example of the real world difference this has made.

Answer: The strength, commitment and adaptability of this support team has ensured that the senior management team has been able to continue to function effectively throughout this prolonged pandemic response. The consistent support behind the senior team is immeasurable and, while never underestimated by the senior team itself, the work is often unseen – but crucially important.