Kia ora everyone, this year has certainly sped along at a speed most of us could barely keep up with and yes, we are now in Spring and the final three months of the year. Our services have continued to grow in all the regions we are in, with steady growth of independent living services in Invercargill, Dunedin, and Central Otago, and rapid growth of youth services in Christchurch and future planned growth in Nelson.

With ever increasing services comes the challenges of larger amounts of staff. In fact we now employ over 500 staff across the South Island. Keeping up with training needs and communication of course also means a lot more work and organising by team leaders, our training department, and the on-flow to HR. To be successful we need to work as a team, supporting each other and also looking at how we prioritise our weeks. Training is very important as it gives us the skills we need to provide high quality and safe support to the people who use our services. It will be a huge positive if by the end of 2023 we can confidently say all those who have been booked onto training have attended, and our quarterly review meetings are all up to date.

Of course, our biggest focus should always be on the safe, respectful, and person led support that we provide to the people who use our services. If we put that at the centre of our focus, then everything else will flow as it should. Thank you for everyone’s hard work. We really do appreciate and value it.

Trevor Lewis, Operations Manager.