Our journey to deliver the best possible care and support

By Andrea Kinkade, Chief Executive of Lifeways

Since taking over as Chief Executive in August 2022, I have been leading a transformation at Lifeways that has resulted in improving standards across all areas of our work.

I’m proud of the changes we’ve made so far, which is why we’ve recently launched a new webpage to showcase the hard work of our 10,000 colleagues who are providing millions of hours of support to 4,000 people.

Our transformation has been complex, but it has been delivered quickly and safely, and it positively impacts every area of the business and our people. There is still more to do. Together our teams are ambitious to make even more improvements. 

Earlier this month ITV featured examples of care that we are not proud of. I deeply regret the distress these failures caused and I am sorry. Everyone deserves to feel safe, cared for, and respected. Lifeways exists to provide compassionate, high-quality care and support: any instance where we fall short is unacceptable. We have zero tolerance for poor care and will always take full responsibility and action to ensure that the risk of such an incident happening again is reduced to the minimum.  The issues that ITV referred to have been dealt with.

Thankfully, as awful as these incidents are, they are very rare and our transformation further mitigates the risk of them occurring. However, despite all our hard work and investment, we will always have some reliance upon the people we support, families, guardians, support teams, commissioners and other external partners speaking up. All of those people are eyes and ears. 

So I reiterate a call that I have made many times before: please be vigilant.  Report anything that does not feel right to people who can do something about it: our Quality Team.  Lifeways has a dedicated, completely confidential whistleblowing hotline, which can be accessed on 0800 090 2478 or through a form on our website here.   

Since August 2022, our Transformation Plan has improved the quality of care and support we provide for over 4,000 people. We’ve increased training for our team of 10,000 employees, improved retention and our transformation journey has seen over £10m invested to improve the quality of our properties, training, pay and systems.

We hope that the demonstrable improvements, commitment to quality and strengthened governance systems we have taken into our third year of our Transformation Plan, ensure that every person, family member, stakeholder and colleague has confidence in the care and support that we provide.