I’m suddenly six months into my big adventure, and I think I can report it is going well.

We now rent two offices next door each other. One is an admin space with 3 desks plus storage for books and filing and psychometrics. The other is a clinical space that has a set of 4 chairs around a coffee table where we can do meetings and therapy sessions, but the room also has a treatment bench as I sub-let it two days plus evenings and weekends to a friend of mine who is a physiotherapist. I’ve gatherered a team I am very confident about and view as one of the real plus-sides to this work: an on-the-cusp-of-qualifying CP who has the same passion about getting attachments right as I do who is currently part-time but will be full-time as soon as the last course components are fulfilled; an AP who has a full-time contract but I released 2 days per week to a different job for 5 months; a general assistant who is doing ad hoc hours to help us keep on top of the invoicing, tendering, and policy stuff; and an ad hoc admin who I email dictation or scanned notes to for typing. I currently work near enough full-time hours, but arranged to allow me a mummy day each week to be with my daughters. We’ve got payroll and accountants and VAT registration and all of that running fairly smoothly now too.

The court work is still the backbone of the business. We take two complex family assessments per month (and/or lots of smaller assessments) and I end up having to attend professionals meetings and courts a couple of days per month. However we have also done a few training events for professionals that have gone well (give or take some snowy weather that made it hard for people to get to one event, and a village hall venue with insufficient heating for another). We’ve picked up a couple of therapy cases who have self-referred and hope that once we get the website updated and decide whether to do any form of advertising we may get more of these (it turns out I’m less uncomfortable than I thought about charging clients, if they are well-off and actively choosing private over NHS options).

We also bid for our first public sector contract, which has been a huge learning curve. I’ve had to write a huge set of policy documents relating to equal opportunities, protecting children and vulnerable adults, health and safety, risk assessment, disciplinary procedures, complaints process, mission statement, IT policy, notekeeping, whistle-blowing and everything else you could think of. I’ve also had to write job adverts, person specifications, offer letters and contracts. And I’ve had to write out financial statements, cost the bid, write the proposal, attend a qualifying interview. I now feel quite ambivalent about whether I want to secure the contract or not, because relative to other sources of income it will be quite a lot of work for not a lot of money, but it might be a nice contrast with the other components of the business. To be honest I hadn’t realised we would get through to the final round, so I hadn’t planned in advance enough. The big barrier now is whether we are prepared to register with Ofsted and spend £360 and complete a 22 page application form, on the hope that it is approved within the 6 week timescale left, when Ofsted say it can take upto 16 weeks as the process involves collecting their own CRB checks and references on everyone in the company.

Apart from that I’ve been made clinical director of a parenting charity, which is another learning curve for me, as I have not been involved in a charity, or setting up a clinical service from scratch before. It is a new challenge to deal with politicians and to keep a grip of the quality and evidence based nature of the service we wish to provide, despite the pressures to do everything asap. There is also the fundraising and conference and publicity to organise. I’ve been doing a joint project between the parenting charity and the local university, and I’ve been doing a bit of teaching for another university and I’m just starting to bid for some research funding to complete some research I started a few years ago. There is the option to write it up as a series of papers, and/or as a PhD thesis (I could submit by papers if I published 5 or more papers on the same theme). I’ve also been commissioned to write a book on attachment for foster and adoptive parents, which is another new challenge!

However, my trigger for posting an update today was more personal. Yesterday I sorted out a box of paperwork I brought with me from my NHS post, and I threw out all the papers that related to ‘battles’ like my grievance with the trust, the tender and TUPE, even my AfC banding appeal from years ago. Its great to know I don’t need that armoury any more!

Update: I’ve prioritised and streamlined to focus on the things that are the most productive and interesting to me, and to get rid of those that were more effort than reward. That meant Ofsted registration was out, and with it the bid for the adoption support tender (though I learnt a lot from the process and now have lots of lovely policy documents to draw on). I’ve also resigned from the parenting charity. My reasoning was fourfold: firstly that it was more middle management and I left the NHS to get out of that, secondly that it was hugely time consuming and meant that I couldn’t do other things that were higher up my prioroty list, thirdly that the charity had strong policitcal links which didn’t fit my personal values, and lastly I felt like there was very poor communication and questionable professional boundaries, particularly by one of the trustees. I need to learn to listen to my husband more, as he told me I should never have taken it on in the first place and has thought I should leave for ages!

That means that I can focus on:

• court work, which is the thing that brings in the money

• teaching, training, consultancy which is interesting and varied

• academic teaching and collaboration with universities

• writing my book

• bidding for some research grants

• writing up journal papers