This month, 2gether Support Solutions turns two and we’ve created an infographic of our key milestones that we have achieved so far.

We also interviewed Fin Murray, our Managing Director, about what have been the highlights as well as the challenges of the past two years. Here’s what he said:

“There has been a lot of learning and understanding for us to do. We’re now in the second year and we’re using that data from the first year to understand how services can be improved. We’re here essentially for patients and visitors, and what we want to do over the course of our very long contract, which is in fact 25 years with the Trust, is to make those services very sustainable, make sure they are exactly what the Trust and patients need and the best quality that we can be.

“I’m very proud of the work we are doing in the social principles area… it’s really important to us that when we set up 2gether, the driver to make sure that any profit that the company makes, we want to make sure that it is put into things that really make a difference to peoples’ lives and the communities.

“There are three areas that we focus on; firstly jobs – and we try to make as many local jobs for under 25s or long term unemployed as we can.  Secondly, we want to open up as much of our contracts and services to local suppliers so that the local community benefit from that. And thirdly the local community itself – by engaging in various networks and various charities to be able to support them.

“Our view is that all of that is about a healthy local community and a local population, we all use the services so therefore it’s really important that the services that people have on a day to day basis are really good and as good as they can be and your friends and relatives are all going to get those services at the end of the day and that’s what we’re really keen to do.”

“With the Covid-19 pandemic it has been a huge credit to all of our staff. They have been very open to change and there has been a lot of this from week to week to make sure that we are keeping safe. No one has dealt with a pandemic before and therefore it’s been pretty intense and a very challenging and difficult period for a lot of people. We have invested in an employee assistance programme, because at this time our mental health and being able to get advice and support is really important.

“Looking forward there are a lot of things to do, including our sustainability plan, and I have a real optimism about the future of 2gether. We have been able to realise the real living wage sooner than planned, we aimed to do that within three years and we’ve been able to that in under two years, which is fantastic and is a reason for people to come and join us.”