Sunni's story
Contracts officer role
Sunni is employed by Leicestershire County Council as part of a team of contract officers. The contract officer role monitors the performance of social care services against their contract and works with care managers to ensure that they can meet their contractual requirements.
Sunni works with a portfolio of roughly 30 providers. These are all residential care homes across Leicestershire and vary from a 3 bed complex Learning disabilities home to a 40 bed Dementia specialist service.
Sunni organises annual contract visits to ensure social care services are meeting the requirements of their contract. She will then put findings into a report and support providers in any areas that they are struggling to meet their requirements.
Sunni works closely with the managers of the services on her caseload and with quality officers in the quality team.
Day in the life of a contracts officer
Sunni's role is a mix of office based work and visits to meet with care managers. Sunni aims to complete on average two contract management visits each week. Sunni is able to plan ahead for contract monitoring visits but she is often required to do ad hoc visits when concerns are raised about a service that she monitors.
In addition to these duties, contracts officers also take turns managing the enquiry line (an email inbox and phone line for providers who require information about contracts). At other times, Sunni is likely to be report writing, keeping logs of her interactions with managers and reviewing the actions that managers have taken to meet her recommendations. Sunni's reports provide residential care home managers with evidence of findings from her visit. In cases where issues are raised, Sunni works with her colleagues to support service managers to make necessary changes.
I chose to work in social care as it's incredibly rewarding to see how people are able to live a fulfilled life as a direct result of what I do. For example, I recently visited a residential home and found that a lady using the service was not being offered personal care in the way that she preferred. This is a breach of contract because we require services to deliver care in line with the wishes of the person being supported. I raised my concerns with the service manager and they have since changed the way that they support the lady to ensure that they are respecting her preferences.
2018- present |
Contracts officer - local authority |
2014-2018 |
Deputy manager - residential/ supported living/ respite service |
2014 |
Level 5 diploma in Leadership and Management |
2011-2014 |
Registered manager - home care service |
2011 |
Team leader and supervisor - home care service |
2010-2011 |
Care worker - home care service |
2009-2010 |
Call centre operative |
2009 |
BA (Hons) Business Studies |
Initially I wanted to become a social worker when I first started in care. I quickly realised that it was the direct interaction with service users that I was most passionate about and social care was going to allow me to expand on that passion. I could make such an impact, my work went from sometimes a little help to some really complex work and enabling people to live as much of a fulfilled life as possible. I realised to progress I didn't need to become a social worker and I could become a supervisor and progress towards management.
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