South Essex: Cutting through the tape...

In spite of her name (which sounds like a breed of exotic fish or a martial arts discipline, but is actually an Indian word for victory) Jai Tout is pure English rose.

Blonde, perfect complexion (albeit a little pale, thanks to a stomach bug, but she sips water and soldiers on), Jai is tranquillity personified.

Nothing, you imagine, would ruffle the feathers of this new chairman of the newly-formed South Essex Mental Health and Community Care NHS Trust.

An organisation so new - it came into existence on April 1 - that there's still a strong smell of paint, fluffballs on the rather swanky dark carpet and no handle on the door to her still-sparse office. "We only moved in on Saturday," she tells me apologetically.

The new organisation may have a title that's a mouthful and then some (try saying it when you've had a few), but, apparently it's been formed to cut down on bureaucracy and to improve patient care in south Essex.

The SEMHCCNT is a merger between Southend Community Care Services NHS Trust and Thameside Community Healthcare NHS Trust, themselves no mean contenders in the tongue-twisting stakes.

The merger means two boards instead of one, hence less management. Savings on the paper-pushers should amount to £500,000, which will be ploughed back into services.

Although now "management" herself, Jai's background is a sterling mix of hands-on voluntary and social work.

Her parents were church ministers who had wanted to be missionaries abroad, but instead settled for posts in Britain and an Indian name for their daughter.

The family moved on an annual basis, which Jai admits she found unsettling at the time.

"I don't think it has done me any harm," she adds, a trifle hastily, lest she be misconstrued. "But having to adjust to a new school each time was hard."

Nonetheless, her parents' work tending to the congregation imbued her with a deep sense of social responsibility.

"You cannot fail to be affected if you have any sensitivity and I was certainly aware," she explains.

She went to college in London to study theology and social work and after graduating spent 12 years working as a social worker in the voluntary sector.

This was followed by a move into the public sector, working as a social worker in Oxford with people of all ages, including children and those with learning disabilities.

Her prime area of interest is however, the elderly, and she came to Essex in 1988 as principal officer for the elderly for Essex South West, an area which includes Basildon, Brentwood and Thurrock.

The way we treat this section of the community is of course, an issue of much debate at the moment, in the light of recent investigations revealing some harried hospital doctors are withdrawing or denying treatment to old people.

Jai is pragmatic about the breakdown of the family which can cause old people to become vulnerable. "Families these days do move around more than they used to and it can leave old people feeling isolated and out of day-to-day touch," she says.

"But as far as the NHS is concerned we have got to look at ways of supporting our elderly with quality services.

"The old have ambitions the same as we all do and it is quite wrong that they don't get the right to choose."

So far, so health-speak, but the fact remains that Jai, who is married with no children, came to Essex 12 years ago to be near her own mother, who had moved to Hadleigh. "It's what a lot of daughters do - although not all, of course," she adds, lest she sound judgmental.

Jai has also made a direct impact on places a lot more far-flung than south Essex, including six weeks in Belize, where she researched and produced a national plan on ageing for the Central American country. She has also presented training programmes on volunteer health and social caring in south America and helped to set up a health and social services programme in the remote Beni region of the Amazon in Bolivia.

She used to lecture and speak at conferences on how the elderly should be looked after - all of which have ensured she also something of a name in the international field.

Some of this work was carried out after she left the public sector in 1995 to set up as an independent consultant. However, she was wooed back to the fold in March 1999, taking up the postat the Thameside Community Healthcare NHS Trust.

"I love the job," she says. "I like people and I'm fortunate in many ways. I have enjoyed a good life and I want to put something back."

Fortunate - Jai Tout has travelled extensively in her work and says she has been fortunate in many ways. She sees her new role as her chance to put something back

Picture: MIKE BELLENIE

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.