As Care City registers as a community interest company, our Chief Executive, John Craig reflects on what that means for us, our stakeholders and the community we serve. Exciting times ahead….
Care City is now registered as a community interest company, and we will spin out from NELFT on 1st June. That means that – alongside our growing portfolio of work – we have busily been inventing a new organisation over the last few months. If that sounds exciting, mostly it isn’t. We have had to figure out everything from health and safety policies to payroll providers.
For all that work, our first goal for Monday 3rd June is that nothing changes. We will be in the same offices, working with the same partners, to enable healthy ageing and regeneration. When we tell partners we are ‘spinning out’, there is a danger it sounds like Care City is swanning off to the West End. On the contrary – Barking will remain our home and we are only looking to deepen our relationships with East London. Indeed, that is what CIC status reminds us to do – our community is East London and we exist to work in their interest.
I am aware that there are some other ‘spin out’ processes affecting our nation at the moment. Thanks to our Steering Group, fantastic support from NELFT and incredible leadership from Hannah Harniess, our Head of Projects at Care City, I am pleased to say this process is going smoothly. But, for all that this is a story of continuity, we are still very excited about Care City CIC.
- Being an independent CIC allows us both to embed our mission and moral purpose and to apply social entrepreneurship in pursuit of that mission. We can move quickly and take some calculated risks to attract the talent, resources and ideas to power our mission.
- As the innovation partner to East London’s health and care system, it is right that Care City is not housed within a single provider, despite the selfless support we have had from NELFT. Our governance – as with our work – can now become a platform for whole system partnership. Alongside NELFT and LBBD’s corporate seats on Care City’s Board and executive members, Paul Corrigan as Chair, Jenny Shand from UCLPartners and Yvonne Kelly from BDC are founding members. The Board will continue to grow gradually over the coming year.
- Alongside our Board, and building on the codesign work led within our Test Bed programme by Julie Atkins, Care City is announcing its intention to create a Community Board, to review, shape and challenge its work. We will be recruiting citizens, patients and local staff and experts to this Board during the spring.
- Beyond these changes, we will be focusing even harder on the community interest in our work, we will this year
- seek to make data from our quantitative research in health and care available – safely, securely and anonymously – for public research
- Build on our research portfolio to enable more primary health and care research in East London that generates public benefit
- Continue the work started by our new Test Bed programme to translate health and care innovations into training and recruitment opportunities that allow the public to move into and through health and care careers.
None of this would have been possible without our cofounding organisations, or particularly the support of John Brouder (CEO, NELFT) and Anne Bristow (former deputy-CEO, LBBD). Our Chair has an analogy for this process about growing up and leaving the supportive home of Mum and Dad. I know that this analogy would be as unwelcome for John and Anne as it is for me! However, it does hold to this extent – Care City is growing up, and it will be forever be in the debt of its founders.
