Heather Langlois has been announced as the new group chief executive officer for St John Ambulance and Rescue Service and the St John Guernsey charity.
She said that from an external perspective, the organisation would look and run the same.
‘The organisation has been operating in the island for quite a long time.
‘The ambulance service has been operating for nearly 90 years and the charity first started in 1882 in different forms,’ she said.
‘It’s been through many iterations and for the last few years, it’s operated really cohesively together.
‘We’ve worked really well together supporting each other’s initiatives and strategies and projects, but over the last year, noticed that a lot of our strategic priorities were starting to overlap.’
She said that there were areas where efficiencies could be made to have a greater impact on the organisation, but also the local community.
With the management changes, both sides of the organisations will be brought together a bit closer to work more cohesively.
With Mrs Langlois as CEO, she will be supported by two senior members of staff from the Ambulance and Rescue Service. John Atkins has stepped up to chief ambulance officer and Aimee Lihou has been appointed chief operating officer.
‘There are two parts to St John in Guernsey. I like to refer to us as brother and sister, so whilst we have our own priorities and our own service provision, we work really harmoniously together to support one another,’ she said.
‘There’s lots of overlap in the impact we have in the community, but each with their own kind of individual identities and their own focus on how they make the greatest impact.’
The Ambulance Service operates the island’s blue light response. The Flying Christine, community first responders, ambulance reserve and patient transfer service all come together under Ambulance & Rescue.
The charitable side provides first aid at public events, runs the youth programme, offers first aid training in schools and commercial work place training.
With the change in management, continuity is the priority, Mrs Langlois said, and in terms of delivery, she expects nothing to change.
‘We want to carry on delivering what we’ve always been delivering and continue to do that as well as we can,’ said Mr Atkins.
‘We have an ageing demographic and over the last decade, we’ve seen an increase in calls to the service, so part of our strategic thinking going forward is how we can continue to play our part in sustainable healthcare delivery with an ageing demographic.’
St John is a global organisation, but very few places in the world have St John operating a blue light service.
‘It makes us very unique and it gives a lot of flexibility for our island and what we can do, how fast we can move to make changes to meet the ageing demographic and the needs of our community,’ said Mrs Langlois.
‘The charity is a really unique part of our organisation here locally and it really supports the infrastructure of some of the things our island does year-on-year, such as the North and West shows and Liberation Day.
‘I think the island is really lucky to have an organisation like this and I can probably speak for all of us when I say it’s a real privilege to work for this organisation.’
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