GETTING TO KNOW..... ROB GUILE

In the latest of the 'Getting To Know' series, LEE STEVENS talks to ROB GUILE, the new joint policy and commissioning manager for mental health in Portsmouth.

RG: I was interested because I was doing a regional job part funded by the home office. I was working with refugees and asylum seekers, local authorities, voluntary sector, and private sector organisations in the whole of the south of England. I saw this post and I thought it would be a really good challenge. I knew Stephen Corrigan (Joint Projects and Contracts Manager) and others and was aware of the work they had done.

RG: When I left school I became a plumber. I decided I'd done that because my brother was an electrician and my dad had wanted us to be tradesmen. I had more interest in working with people. Mum was a nurse, so I'd been brought up around hospitals and seen the rewards from working with people. I applied for a job in a psychiatric hospital in Brighton as a healthcare support worker. I've been to University and most recently took a health and social care qualification at Portsmouth Uni. I'm more interested in the social care aspect - what people need in their lives other than medication.

RG: I've been in post for three months and I'm still getting to grips with it. Most significantly it involves looking at what services are being provided and what they are achieving. We have to see what we can do to try and commission services that will enable service users to lead the lives they want to lead. It's really bringing national targets together, looking at what local aspirations are and making sure the services we fund meet targets and expectations.

RG: Lots of meetings in general. Today I've met with the executive member for Health, Social care and Housing, I'm meeting you, I've got a meeting at St James to look at the way the Primary Care Trust provide us with data. Then I've got a meeting with my strategic director, then I'll try and clear my many e-mails and then I'll go home.

RG: I think it's great. My only criticism is that information is sometimes hard to find on it. I would also ask that for those people without access to a computer, how do we get the information to them?

RG: The major challenges are the recommendations made recently by the Healthcare Commission inspection. For example, how can we ensure the action plans as a consequence of that go towards an improvement for people? Really it's thinking about how we can embrace a model of recovery that ensures people who need them get access to services. We need to start with 'what do you want to achieve?' We need to start developing some actions that get people from A to B. It's about people having a choice in the services that they get.

RG: I think we're very well resourced and we've got fantastic staff. That's good, and we should talk of the positives. People are doing a good job under challenging circumstances. What I think is bad is that we are in a target driven business. Targets can sometimes overtake what's good for people. If we concentrate on the individual, the targets will come from that. We need to invest in the individual.
 

RG: What needs to develop most is feeding into the Local Implementation Team (LIT). In looking at the role of the service user involvement development worker and enabling that to happen. Also, looking at how best to get views of service users embedded in our commissioning plans. There seems to be a gap, that we seem to be provider dominated at the LIT. We need to get away from a culture where service users feel that lip service is being paid and into one where they feel listened to.

RG: I drink red wine and sometimes I drink Guinness. I'm quite active and I play football. I'm a qualified FA coach. I've put that on the back burner for now what with the challenges of my new job. I listen to lots of music. I like indie rock and a bit of dance music. The only music I really don't like is country and western!