Our economic contributions to the local areas where we support our customers are listed below.

• We buy all our food from our local Asda, Sainsburys & Tesco supermarkets, for our care homes and day centre.
• Tenants in our supported living properties shop in the local supermarkets and smaller shops for their food and other essentials.
• All our company vehicles are serviced and maintained by a local small garage business based in Brent.
• We use a local car cleaning service for company vehicles
• Customers support local restaurants and coffee shops for social activities
• Tenants in our supported living houses are helped into paid work and volunteering roles in their local community

We play a role in strengthening human capital which also helps to support growth in the local economy, by upskilling local people through our training initiatives and promoting continuous professional development, to our locally employed staff. This has added to the social value we offer in the following ways:

• Around Over 70% of our staff team are from the local community. We train our staff to a high level, providing 32 training courses plus the care certificate if they do not already hold a NVQ qualification. This is renewed as per guidance, from yearly to 3 yearly as required. We also offer service and role specific training.
• We give opportunities for work experience to local students, by working with local colleges offering an NVQ in health and social care.
• We pay our staff a living wage and above, we create new local jobs and support young people to develop employability skills. Local jobs create disposable income which is spent by staff in the local community.
• We help staff develop soft skills as well as basic IT skills in using cloud-based software, as our entire IT infrastructure is cloud based.

We realise the importance of the general wellbeing of our staff often working in demanding conditions. Our approach includes basic ‘good business’ practices such as being a considerate employer, respecting the work-life balance of our employees, being open and collaborative with other providers in the area, and representing our local community in a positive manner. We consider ourselves a good employer by initiating the following:

• All staff are given free access to health assured EAP health and wellbeing programme, which is available for staff and their families. It gives staff access to counselling, advice on many subjects, including health, money concerns, mental health etc, and runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week either online, over the phone or in person, supporting staff when they need it most.
• Work life balance since April 2020. We changed staff working hours to give staff a better work life balance. By offering them the option of how they wanted to work their shifts. Some staff continue to work shorter shifts but still over the 5 working days, and some staff work longer shifts overs fewer days, so they have more days off with their family. This has supported families with caring responsibilities and has been helpful to some staff who have felt the pressure of working through COVID-19 and needed more time at home to relax and be with family.
• We have a room at our Day centre which can be offered to local Voluntary Sector groups for use in the evenings and at weekends. (This of course will have to be once COVID-19 is no longer prevalent in the community as we are currently offering “COVID safe bubbles” to vulnerable customers).
• We give opportunities to local volunteers through the London NWL Volunteer Programme.

We have notices reminding staff to switch off lights, we use LED light bulbs, lower-energy appliances and electronic equipment, switch off computer monitors when not in use, reducing the flush volume of our toilets by adding a filled 1-litre plastic bottle to the cistern.

• As we upgrade our lighting systems, we are replacing our bulbs with LED lighting.
• All desktop computers in each service are turned off when not in use. Computers are remotely controlled and automatically go into sleep mode when not in use.
• Some of our toilets are macerators, which are more energy efficient than normal toilets and use less water.
• We have dual flush systems fitted to most of our toilets in our services.
• All windows are double glazed, and lofts are fully insulated
• We belong to a recycle centre, WRAP Watford recycling arts project, where our day service uses recycled items for use at our day provision.
• We are currently installing Hive thermostats in some of our houses to reduce our carbon footprint by not wasting energy
• We recycle waste at all our services.