Finance Monthly Game Changer Awards 2019 Winners Edition

28 www. finance-monthly .com SUSAN BRAND Sue Brand, Managing Director and Founder of RDB Star Rating, developed the company in 1997 to drive up standards in care and provide care homes with a nationally recognised and reliable symbol of ‘quality.’ The importance of the scheme is to enhance transparency to prospective customers and purchasers of care, enabling them to make an informed choice when they are at their most vulnerable. The RDB accreditation/inspection is carried out annually and is holistic, objective and developmental in its approach. It takes between two to five days to complete, depending on the registration category and size of the home. The RDB model and assessment tool was developed after lengthy consultation with the broadest range of interested parties. It is client focused in its approach, responsive to the home’s client group, and encompasses a diverse range of care standards, varying from the way personal care is delivered to the management administration of the home and its personnel. Care homes are evaluated against more than 200 RDB care standards. These care standards are drawn from best practice research across the care sector and tempered by what is realistic and achievable, therefore reflecting what good providers do naturally. 10 to 16 items of evidence are collected for each standard, from residents, management, staff and documentation, and 25 of the key standards are underpinned with a quality assurance standard. Homes receive a report which includes graphs depicting their overall performance, their performance for each standard, and the results from their confidential resident and staff satisfaction surveys. Successful homes are awarded with a star rating between two and five stars and provided with a plaque and certificate to display. RDB Products and Assessments are based on the principles of best practice benchmarking and are certified by UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service), to the international and European standard ISO/IEC 17020:2012, for inspection bodies. RDB was the first company in the UK to achieve this award for Social Care. Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England, commented: “The RDB Star Rating scheme has been at the forefront of measuring quality in residential care services for many years. At a time when the quality of the care services is constantly being scrutinised, the news that this excellent scheme has been accredited by UKAS, gives providers and the public an independently accredited view of quality. RDB Star Rating is an independently accredited and universally acclaimed mark of quality. Sue Brand comments: “Care homes which regularly put themselves forward for annual accreditation are demonstrating a real commitment to improving the quality of life for their residents and staff.” Sue Brand has spent most of her life working to improve the lives of adults living in a residential care environment. She trained and qualified as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital in London and opened her first care home in the 1970’s followed by a further 3 in the 1980s. In 1988 she produced the first set of training videos for the care sector. Sue became the Chair of the East Sussex and Brighton & Hove National Care Home association in the 1990s when the care sector was in crisis. To address some of the serious issues facing the care sector at that time, she founded the RDB Star Rating System. Sue has always been passionate about residents being treated with dignity and respect and has spent many years campaigning to achieve this. She is very focused and highly tenacious and uses her significant experience, her intellectual abilities and interpersonal skills to ensure that her objectives for quality care are reached and surpassed. AREA OF EXPERTISE ● Social Care ● Board member of the Quality Care Campaign ● Member on the Social Care drafting panel of the British Standards Institute (BIS) ● Trustee of the National Dignity Council ● Member of HASCAF (Health & Social Care Accreditation Forum) ● Member of the Royal Society of Medicine ● Founder Member of the National Skills Academy ● Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts ● Alumni Cranfield ● Alumni Common Purpose CONTACT 8 Tungsten Building George Street, Fishersgate West Sussex, BN41 1RA Tel: 01273 411811 Email: susanbrand@btinternet.com www.rdbstar-rating.com SUSAN BRAND FINANCE MONTHLY GAME CHANGER AWARDS 2019 united kingdom Managing Director & Founder of RDB Star Rating