From the Desk of the CEO – September 2022

Dear clients, families and supporters, it is my great pleasure to invite you all to the LDS end of year family gathering complete with nativity play and lots of fun activities and great food. As per the invite later in this communique, it will be held on 26th November 2022 at the Fullarton Community Centre. It will be so good to return of a face-to face events where we can celebrate our client’s achievements, to celebrate the birth of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, and to share in fellowship and service with our wonderful community of clients, families, advocates and staff.

LDS Structure

Following some of the management changes over the past 12 months and following feedback from a number of families, we have recognised we need to continue to invest in the management layers of LDS to continue to provide the support and development of our wonderful teams of support workers who work with our clients. When we introduced the role of team leader, the intention was that they would spend a portion of their time on staff development, administration and be supported by our two Senior Client Service Managers Ben and Matt. This structure has been working well but we acknowledge the increasing workloads on team leaders and Senior Client Service Managers. In our recent client surveys you have told us that you want your team leader to be freed up so that they can be more available in the houses.

Based on the above and to ensure we continue to invest in our people, we are in the process of hiring four new Client Service Managers to focus on staff development, client service delivery quality and effectiveness while making sure the team leaders have enough time to focus on day to day supports for our clients. We will communicate who our new Client Service Managers are to all clients and families after as the recruitment is finalised. Your team leader will continue to be your main point of contact for any matters relating to clients. Please reach out to them at any time, they are there for you as are Ben and Matt our Senior Client Services Managers. My door is always open too, if you wish to raise any matters of concern or compliment.

Thank you once again for your continued partnership in supporting and empowering our clients to achieve their goals. One of LDS core values is “Excellence”. While we are not always “excellent” we will continue to strive to improve and develop our awesome team of support workers who go the extra mile and have a heart for our mission to help clients thrive and to connect in Christian community. We will keep investing in our teams and always welcome feedback on how we can improve our services.

I particularly want to shout out a huge thanks to St John’s congregation who feature in this edition. Practical examples of expressing God love through serving each other is a rich reminder of how much God loves each and every one of us created uniquely by Him and made perfect through our shared hope in the resurrection.

Blessings, JvR