Introducing Dimensions’ new CEO

After a career pressing for better lives for more people with learning disabilities and autism, Steve Scown stepped down as Chief Executive of Dimensions on the 7th March.

I was personally thrilled to witness him receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent National Learning Disability and Autism Awards. It was a wholly deserved accolade recognising Steve’s long term contribution, not just to Dimensions but to the wider social care sector.

In succeeding Steve as CEO of Dimensions, my focus is to build on what we’re great at, and to pay particular attention to the pinch points.  I’m determined to engage more at governmental level to tackle the fundamental issue of pay in our sector. If interested, you can read our submission to the Health Select Committee on that subject here. On that note there’s a myriad of competing voices in our sector so an early priority for me is to build stronger partnerships with others. We speak more compellingly when we speak as one.

At Dimensions we’re determined to continue the fight for people with learning disabilities and autistic people to lead fulfilling, valued and ordinary lives in homes of their own as active members of their local communities – everything, in fact, that the government’s ‘Valuing People’ strategy aspired to back in 2001.

In many ways, I believe Dimensions is well equipped to achieve that. Our colleagues are trained to deliver outstanding active support. We employ experts by experience, family consultants and a highly skilled clinical team who collectively help us improve the quality of our support and shape our ways of working more broadly. We have specialists in many roles (for example our housing brokers) who can tackle some of the knottiest issues around support setup. We have some of the sector’s deepest understanding of how to support people with a diverse and complex range of needs and histories out of ATUs and through Transition. And crucially, we have a structure that devolves decision making that directly affects the people we support to the most local level possible – putting those people firmly in charge of their lives. Dimensions, I believe, is a great organisation to be supported by but as always there is more to do. We are not complacent.

There are some huge issues to tackle. Despite being recognised as a ‘Great Place to Work,’ like other providers we are currently in the midst of the most severe recruitment and retention challenge I’ve experienced (and I’ve worked in social care for over 30 years). And then there’s Covid-19: whilst I believe we’ve been exceptionally successful at keeping people safe, the pandemic created so many other issues, from access to healthcare to family visits.

This is a period of change at Dimensions, with the concurrent retirement of our Director of Quality, Public Affairs and Marketing, Jackie Fletcher, who has made a vast contribution to Dimensions over the past twenty nine years.

Replacing Jackie, we welcome Rhoda Iranloye as our Director of Regulatory Assurance and Pippa Foster as our Director of Customer Experience. Last but most certainly not least, we’re thrilled to welcome back Sinead McHugh-Hicks, succeeding me as Managing Director of Dimensions.

Just as my career began as a kitchen assistant in an older people’s home, Sinead started as a relief support worker in Dimensions. Other than a year working elsewhere, Sinead has forged a fantastic career here ever since. You can find more about each member of our executive team here. And I can’t help but observe that this International Women’s Day, Dimensions has many high achieving women at all levels of our organisation, including a first female CEO.

I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing Steve, Jackie, Rhoda, Pippa and Sinead well and I very much look forward to working closely with you moving forwards on our shared agenda.