Quality and Compliance

At the Hesley Group we take quality very seriously indeed. Quality is everyone's business and means we are meeting people's needs in a way that helps them develop as individuals but ensures the service they get is safe and effective.

The Quality Governance Committee have oversight of practice across the Hesley Group and operate with a considerable degree of independence. The independent chair of the committee also sits on our Executive group so we have a joined up approach to governance. The Chair is Sue Fiennes, a well respected former director of social services and with current involvement in safeguarding adults and children boards. The Quality and Governance Committee also includes two other independent persons, Jan Slater has had a long career in social services as a senior manager and assistant director, also Diane Ekins who has had a long career working in health services and senior manager for people with learning disability and mental health needs. There is representation from the operational side of both children and adults services managed by the Hesley Group. Our Head of Quality, Janet Poulain and Head of Clinical Services, Dr Fred Furniss also sit on the Committee. Meetings are held quarterly and link back into the Executive.

The Quality Team:

Janet Poulain, Head of Quality is a registered social worker. Janet has had a career in social care since 1981. For the last ten years of working in the public sector Janet worked as an inspector for the local authority, then since 2002 as a manager for the care regulators NCSC and CSCI. She was responsible for registering and overseeing inspection of adults and children's services, including care homes and residential special schools. She joined Hesley Group in 2008. Janet takes the lead on policy development and is a member of the Executive team at the Hesley Group.

Sally McSharry, Quality Manager is a Registered General Nurse. Sally has had a long career firstly in the NHS then in owning and managing care/nursing homes. Between 1997 and 2008 Sally worked as an inspector for the NHS Nursing Homes Inspectorate, then for the social care regulator (NCSC and CSCI). Sally has worked for the Hesley Group since 2009 in a quality role but also as a care services manager for several months in one of our adults services.

Selwyn Marston, Quality Manager qualified as a social worker and has had a career in social work spanning adults and children's services. He joined a local authority inspection team as an inspector then like Janet and Sally transferred to the social care regulators NCSC and CSCI. Selwyn's main area of interest is in Children's Services. Since leaving CSCI Selwyn worked as a quality and compliance manager for a large domiciliary care service. He joined the Hesley Group in 2011.

Emma Jenkins is our Health and Safety Manager. Her background before joining the Hesley Group in 2009 was advising on health, safety, environment and quality for a multi-site organisation. She has a NEBOSH Diploma and is a graduate member of IOSH. Emma is responsible for ensuring all health and safety policies remain up to date and for checking our managers and staff adhere to policies to maintain safe services and premises. She also has responsibility for overseeing staff safety issues and dealing with insurance for the company. The Hesley Group is accredited by the Contractors Health and Safety (CHAS) Assessment Scheme and Investors in People.

Faye Clifton, our Quality Analyst is a psychology graduate and hopes at some stage to qualify as a clinical psychologist. She supports services by providing analyses of incidents, identification of patterns and undertakes projects such as the regular questionnaires to relatives and staff questionnaires. Faye is also involved alongside speech and language services in developing self advocacy, the Hesley Resident Council, and consulting and involving people.

• We provide advice, information and support to managers
• We work to develop new initiatives in planning and delivering good quality person centred care
• We make sure we have policies and procedures that ensure we meet our legal obligations as well as delivering best practice
• We do periodic checks within services to test out what is happening
• We look at incidents and accidents

The Quality and Compliance Team regularly undertake work within the services to constantly help improve what we do and how we do it.

The important messages are:

a) Quality is everyone's business, and

b) You are never "there" - quality is constantly evolving and the goals ever shifting

About Hesley Group Policies, Procedures and Guidance