CAIR Scotland service users on a dry ski slope

CAIR Scotland primarily works with substance misusers, providing a range of educative, preventive, treatment, and recovery services. It also provides specialist services for young people at risk, for example, looked-after children, those affected by sexual health issues, young offenders, and those who are homeless.

After six years of being addicted to heroin, Ashley had hit rock bottom when she started a methadone programme. “I was told about CAIR Scotland and started coming to the women’s group. We would talk about what was going on in our lives and any problems we were having – the group understood what I was going through.”

Using CAIR Scotland’s drug services has helped Ashley turn her life around, she says. “Now I’m a peer mentor and have people coming to me and asking my advice. Without coming here I don’t think I would be as far in my recovery.”

When the charity approached Pilotlight it was at a crossroads, says its chair Rita Keyte. “The organisation had grown steadily and we were at the point where we had to decide whether to stay the same size or look at delivering services elsewhere in Scotland.”

The charity’s services cover five local authorities, and expanding would raise several challenges, for example, having staff based in another local authority area and tendering for work from new funders.

Unsure how to proceed, the Pilotlighters’ probing questions were a great help, says Rita. “It made us really question why we were even thinking of expanding. And it highlighted the gaps so we started implementing changes after the first couple of meetings because some of the things the Pilotlighters said were so obvious.”

So, financial reports were reorganised so that the board could tell at a glance the projected spend against actual spend; the website was rebranded; and an intranet for staff was set up. 

The question of whether to look further afield would be determined by a business plan, but the current one was out of date. 

“This was our main focus. A lot of it was basic stuff that we knew, but weren’t putting into practise in a structured and disciplined way, such as pulling out the evidence of need so that we could set targets. 

“If the chief executive comes to me now and says there is an opportunity to tender for work my first question would be ‘which bit of the business plan does that support?’ and if he can say ‘it supports this bit and fits these targets’ then it’s worth looking at whether we take it further.

“Those decisions will be based on an assessment of risk to the organisation – another thing we didn’t do before.”

A longer term goal is to create more social enterprises as a means of generating income and it plans to open a child care facility in Edinburgh as a social enterprise. “That’s a big jump for us into a different field of operation and without the business plan and risk assessment that decision would have been harder,” says Rita. 

“It has been an energising experience and the outcome has been greater clarity and focus on where we want to go, and a wealth of ideas as to how we get there.”

The Pilotlight team consisted of an individual member and corporate members from Brodies LLP, Scottish Widows Investment Partnership and ScottishPower. Neil Bannerman, business change director at ScottishPower, says: “Clearly, financially they were strong, but they lacked a real strategic focus and direction, which meant they were jumping into things without stepping back and thinking ‘where do we want to take this?’”

The team first suggested that CAIR Scotland needed to decide what its key deliverables were. “Our advice was to keep it small,” says Neil. “They needed to be more definitive about what they were aiming to do and how to measure success. We suggested coming up with three things to achieve – for example, the child care facility – rather than trying to do everything. This was the main thing we helped steer them on. 

“They had all the key components to be successful but lacked the ability to lead the charity forward at a strategic level and I think that is the legacy we left.”