Managing Change

Four national developments have impacted on not for profit drugs agencies in recent years, including Lifeline. These are:

1. Public Sector Reform including Welfare Reform
2. Devolution and Mainstreaming
3. Third Sector, Privatisation and Social Enterprise Developments;
4. Changes in the Drug Treatment Sector

Each development requires a strategic response in its own right. Each of them has implications for the client group we work with. Together they present a significant challenge for our strategic planning, and we see that challenge as an opportunity to prepare ourselves for the future. Trustees, volunteers, the workforce and the executive have been required to take a very close look at what we say, produce, and moreover, what we deliver. We have had to scrutinise, restructure, plan, and instigate change very directly.

This year we have conducted a Strategic Review in consultation and alongside a Management Review.

Restructure

This has led to a radical restructure of the organisation and Lifeline has established new Directorates from within existing resources to maximise its efforts in key areas:

• Adult Drug Treatment
• Prison and Community Services
• Young People
• Central Services

These directorates are supported by our communication expertise and publishing and research functions.

Development Themes

Theme One: Services
Alongside our beneficiaries, to co-produce, sustain and grow a range of viable, competitive and adaptable, palliative, treatment, recovery, prevention and education services and approaches.

Theme Two: Governance: Viability and Accountability, Safety and Quality
To ensure our services are embedded within an active support and policy framework sufficient to guarantee their viability and accountability, probity, safety and quality.

Theme Three: Workforce Development
To implement a range of policies, programmes and practices designed to develop a workforce whose skills, commitment and energies stand out as our organisation’s key resource and asset.

Theme Four: Commitment to Learning, Campaigning and Education
To develop and promote our organisation’s services, knowledge, resources and campaigns within all those settings and contexts best suited for the continued viability and advantage of Lifeline and the health and wellbeing of our beneficiaries.

"We need to be able to declare our own interests. We need to be able to separate out the health and wellbeing of our clients from the safety and strength of our communities and we need not to confuse these separate sets of interests with our own individual financial and career interests as workers and managers in the drug treatment industry. With a commitment to a long term vision, (one that doesn’t set drug users against communities), a readiness to be self-critical and a commitment to understanding the current context in which we are working and planning our future, we will be more ready to think about where we fit into the future."

Ian Wardle
Lifeline CEO