Heidi Stanley, co-founder and director of StanleySmith Case Management, discusses how the back-office team is vital to the delivery of client service, and how the office team work with case managers and carers to make provision of care and rehab the best it can possibly be
At StanleySmith Case Management, our award-winning work is truly a team effort.
The work of our case managers and carers in delivering the life-changing care and rehabilitation to our clients is supported our ‘back office’ team, without whom we simply couldn’t deliver the quality of work for which we have become known.
For our case managers, the certainty they have such a capable team behind them, supporting them in every way, is a huge advantage. As a small but growing and ambitious business, we are keen to get the foundations in place from which we are thriving and seek to develop even further.
In our office-based team, we have a number of excellent and lovely people who, while they may not always have the client-facing role of our case managers, they are every bit as fundamental to the delivery of our service.
Ruth is our finance and operations manager, whose background is as an accountant. She is instrumental in checking all our costs and budgeting for clients, as well as our own finances within StanleySmith to support the work of our external accountants. Ruth also proofs and checks everything that goes out to ensure our documentation is of the highest standards.
Admin and HR are ably handled by Lou and Rachel. Lou is our admin assistant and is instrumental in the background on a day-to-day basis, ensuring everything runs smoothly. She uploads documents and adds them to our secure online system and sends out reports securely. If our case managers have any changes to make, they can do that and send it back to her securely. This is a vital part of the process, not only in terms of efficiency, but also in terms of cost – it is much more cost-effective in a client’s case not to use the case manager’s time to do this. Lou also carries out our due diligence when we instruct therapists, to ensure we have their insurance certificates and registration details.
Rachel is our HR and admin assistant who handles all the day-to-day queries from our carers and oversees the management of time sheets, annual leave and sickness through preparing up-to-date spreadsheets. This management of our team and having the ability to get an overview of when and where we have gaps to fill is invaluable. Rachel also supports in organising training for our carers as and when they need it, ensuring we are continually on top of delivering the highest standards, and supports the work of our external HR provider, Peninsula.
We also have two excellent case management assistants in Rebecca and Matt. Rebecca and Matt work with case managers from start to finish on recruitment, pulling the adverts together through to shortlisting and interviewing, and then sending the offer letter and overseeing the onboarding process. They also do research for us as case managers, which again is cost effective for the client, and hugely valuable to us as case managers because office-based tasks don’t go to the bottom of the list because we’re juggling so much. Rebecca has fantastic communication skills – she also speaks three languages – which is essential when she is coordinating so much with case managers and carers.
Matt’s background is as a team leader and that experience is very important to us in terms of overseeing the work of a whole team, he is experienced in supporting clients who have sustained a severe brain injury. His previous role included involvement managing a team of carers. Matt also has experience in teaching, which contributes to his very supportive approach, and the application of his leadership skills has really helped us to drive things forward.
These people are all absolutely central to our team, and their skills enable us to deliver the very client-focused, tailored approach which we are so proud of, and which was a key part in us being named Small Case Management Company of the Year at the CMSUK Awards 2022 – a fantastic endorsement of our work so soon into the StanleySmith story.
Wellbeing is also something that is hugely important to us, and we are very mindful of the impact supporting seriously injured and often deeply traumatised clients has on our case managers and carers. The work of our office team is a key factor in that, ensuring things run efficiently and smoothly, with high-quality record keeping, report writing and structure helping to take pressure off our case managers. Rebecca and Matt have both also completed wellbeing training.
The delivery of quality case management does take huge commitment, effort and dedication from the entire team – and at StanleySmith, we’re lucky to have both fantastic client-facing and back-office team members, who work together to ensure we are continuing to support clients and families in every way we can in rebuilding their lives and looking to the future, while also looking after each other through our shared commitment to the wellbeing of our colleagues.
