AFTER 15 years at the helm, the head of one of Bristol's biggest health and social care charities is to step down.
Mel Akers has overseen massive changes at the Staple Hill charity, growing staff numbers from eight to 1,000, helping ten times the number of people than when he joined and seeing turnover rocket from £4 million a year to £28 million.
But now the 60-year-old – a former rock band manager who only got into social care when his bank manager demanded he start paying off his overdraft – is handing his role on to someone with a fresh perspective.
The Milestones Trust was set up in 1987 to empower people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and dementia in the old Avon area.
When Mr Akers joined in 1996 it was a time of change in the way care for such people was carried out, the latter end of a move from long-stay hospitals to homes in the community.
Milestones aimed to help these people out of "long-stay hospitals" and help them live in communities in the same way that anyone else would.
He said: "Long-stay hospitals were closed institutions. Abuse was occurring there and human dignity was ignored.
"Things started to improve in the 1980s and staff got better training, but there were things like bathrooms without doors, open wards and regimented activities.
"People with learning disabilities, long-term mental health needs and people with dementia were fairly low priorities, but by the late 1980s people realised these places weren't a good idea and community care was born."
Under Mr Akers' guidance, Milestones began buying houses in the community for people to move into from hospital wards – "ordinary houses in ordinary communities".
He said: "It seems incredible today but that was fairly revolutionary at the time. Doctors opposed it and parents of patients were frightened about what the change meant, and there were worries about whether communities would accept people.
"It is amazing that 15 years on, now the ambition is not to move people into a shared house, but for people to have their own flat and something meaningful like a job or activity in their lives."
Today Milestones has 1,000 staff – many of whom moved across from the NHS – supporting 1,000 people in 45 homes. It is these people who have brought Mr Akers the most joy in his role. He said: "I am an 'OBE' person – 'other buggers' efforts'.
"All the achievements are achievements of individual service users – people going on their first holiday or getting their first experience of being valued, whether it is getting a job or being a volunteer, or moving into their own home.
"The achievements by the people we serve are the things that really stand out in my mind, people that society had previously written off as 'out of sight, out of mind'.
"Some of our staff have been really good at tracking down people's relatives. I remember talking to a woman who had played with a cousin when they were children, gone off to university and when she came back her cousin wasn't around, and it was a bit of a family secret as he had gone into a hospital.
"But 35 years later they were both beneficiaries of a will and met up again. We helped him move out of the hospital and into a residential home, and he now lives there with support.
"That it is what it is about, getting people a network of meaningful relationships that they wouldn't have happy lives without."
Whoever takes over the reins at the Milestones Trust will be left with a financially stable organisation, a book full of contracts with local authorities and health trusts and plenty of scope to expand.
Offering excellent care on increasingly tight budgets will be a major challenge, but the first hurdle will be getting past the interview panel – which will have some of Milestones' service users sitting on it.
Mr Akers said: "They can spot very quickly whether someone 'gets it' or not, and they can distinguish whether someone is sympathetic or empathetic."
Mr Akers is now looking forward to a well-earned trip to South Africa and a tour of its jazz cafes, but may well return to the charity sector. He said: "It is bitter-sweet, leaving, but 15 years is a long time and Milestones needs a fresh pair of eyes."
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