Viv Ahmun, In-volve’s Chief Officer since 1990, has stood down from his post as CEO in order to take up a role as an independent consultant and pursue other interests. Viv will not be saying goodbye to In-volve because he will continue to provide the organisation with consultancy services. We say thank you to him for his leadership through 17 years of steady growth and look forward to a prosperous relationship with him in the future.
In-volve will be using the next few months to undertake some re-structuring and realignment and there are exciting developments in the pipeline. In the immediate future the organisation will be led by its founder and Deputy CEO, Colin Cripps. In a letter to the organisation’s staff, Colin said:
“Times of change like this present us with unique moments for reflection and re-evaluation. We feel unsettled, a sense of loss, when people move on but this also spurs us to look ahead with clear eyes. Change is always with us and we have to embrace it, not fear it.
2008/9 has been a time of huge challenge for In-volve and 2009/10 will present us with even greater challenges. We have seen the beginnings of the reshaping of young people’s drugs services in England. DAATs are handing over commissioning powers to Children’s services, budgets are no longer ring-fenced and there is a wide variation in the shape and nature of services now being commissioned. The focus on how our core business meshes with work with people involved in crime, gangs and dealing will become greater as our inner cities and already poor estates feel the bite of recession.
The role of the charity sector in providing services to government is changing and demand for our services is likely to increase at a time when budgets are no longer growing: many DAATs are being expected to make reductions in adult drugs services budgets. It is our responsibility to continue to argue for the type and level of service provision we know our clients need while at the same time understanding the business context in which we operate, providing value for money, and providing quality management and care.
We are likely to see big changes in the number and range of organisations providing drugs services in the future. Everybody has to be cost-efficient, especially when that money is in short supply in a competitive tendering environment. We have already seen the beginnings of a consolidation of the sector through mergers of like-minded smaller organisations who wish to continue to be able to compete with the big nationals like Turning Point and CRI. New partnerships and patterns of company organisation are the order of the day.
This is a time to recognise and reassert our strengths: our real commitment to our clients and their communities; the values of learning, personal development and individual growth that we help build in our clients; our insistence on seeing the positive in people, in seeing them as people with potential as well as with problems; our refusal to think that services can’t be improved; our ability to see beyond individual symptoms to new and broader solutions.
Since 1987, when I and a handful of other people in Newham saw the need for a service for drug users in the borough and that it had to meet the needs of diverse communities and ages, the one thing that kept us growing was the belief that we could do it better than the rest and our desire to prove it to our clients and the authorities. We still have that belief and for that I thank our whole workforce and know that we will all grow stronger together through this period of change.”