New roles at Our Way Leeds

STAFF changes are taking place within the Our Way Leeds (OWL) service at Turning Lives Around.

Following the departure of Grace Pegden to pastures new, Sandy Smithen has taken over as Locality Manager while Robert Chandler is the new Registered Services Manager.

Sandy has worked in supported housing for some 35 years, initially joining the organisation to work with male offenders. She moved across to OWL Dispersed which provides floating support to 18-25-year-olds living in community-based accommodation when the Horizon project finished, becoming Team Leader, a role now taken on by Grace Musinga.

Our Way Leeds is the support and accommodation service for 16-25-year-olds in Leeds which is delivered in consortium by Gipsil, Inspire North (formerly Foundation) and Turning Lives Around. Each partner operates largely in a different area of the city with TLA mainly covering the south of Leeds.

“I’m hoping to shine a bright light with the commissioners on the fantastic work we do and how we provide our young people with warm and safe accommodation and assist them in developing their skills for a brighter future for themselves,” said Sandy.

“As Locality Manager my role involves working closely with the other consortium partners in developing the service. I’m keen to streamline policies, procedures and protocols that can vary between partners, so we have set ways of working for OWL regardless of which organisation is the employer.”

In addition to dispersed properties, OWL also has Core and Cluster schemes which combine a central ‘core’ including group accommodation for four young people on-site plus 24/7 support with accommodation clustered within a half mile walk of the core for another 11 young people.

Robert Chandler joined TLA in April initially as Team Leader for the Core and Cluster scheme in Chapeltown with additional line management responsibility for the scheme in Beeston, before taking on the role of Registered Services Manager in July.

His appointment came hot on the heels of TLA’s first Ofsted inspection and Robert has been working closely with Services Director Jenn Bravo and HR to complete the actions identified in that and identify further opportunities for improvement ahead of the next Ofsted inspection.

“The aim is at the next inspection to show a step change improvement and we’re developing an action plan and implementing it to get us to that standard,” Robert explained.

“I’m really enjoying the role. There’s lots of work to be done but I’m finding it interesting and have a good team around me which makes everything much easier.”