With more than two decades in social care, Tina James's career has gone from strength to strength. Qualifying as a social worker in the early 2000s, she began her career as a practitioner in the East locality before progressing to senior practitioner and into her first team manager role. From there, Tina’s journey saw her manage teams across the borough, including helping to establish the former Access and Response Team, leading the Hospital Discharge Team for over six years, and later returning to the East as a locality manager.

In her current role as a Head of Service at Walsall Council, Tina oversees Walsall’s locality teams, the in house provider service and Pathway to Independence, including prevention, reablement and the newly developing enablement service. Although her role is intended to be strategic, Tina is clear that leadership often means rolling up your sleeves.

“My role is about developing services and moving things forward but in reality, because resources are tight, I’m often much more hands-on than you’d expect.”

From staff consultations and one-to-one meetings, to interviews, complaints, performance and regional projects, no two days are the same. Tina works closely with group managers, commissioning, health colleagues and regional partners to ensure services are aligned, equitable and focused on outcomes that matter.

At the heart of Tina’s work is Pathway to Independence, a service designed to reduce, prevent and delay people’s need for long-term support — a key duty under the Care Act.

The service includes:

  • Prevention and early intervention: led by occupational therapists the team provide low-level equipment, advice and community signposting.
  • Reablement: supporting people to rebuild confidence, relearn skills and regain independence after illness, injury or loss of confidence. The team also work with people who have a visual impairment. Specialist Visual Impairment Rehab Officers work with children and adults to be as independent as possible through the use of equipment, travel training and using a white cane.
  • Enablement: a developing service supporting people with learning disabilities, autism, mental health needs and young people transitioning to adult services to build everyday life skills and reduce reliance on long-term care.

“The aim is always to help people stay independent for as long as possible and to leave services without needing ongoing support wherever we can.”

Tina is passionate about neighbourhood and partnership working because she sees the gaps that appear when services operate in silos.

“People fall through the gaps when they don’t quite fit into one box and those people often get the poorest outcomes.”

She believes partnership working reduces duplication and frustration for residents, prevents people having to repeat their story, enables quicker, more flexible responses and makes better use of community and voluntary sector assets. Most importantly, it puts the person at the centre, rather than organisational processes.

“Sometimes systems are efficient for organisations but not for people. We have to rethink our models so they work for real lives, not just workflows.”

Tina is realistic about the scale of health inequalities in Walsall, but optimistic about what neighbourhood working can achieve.

“We won’t change things like diabetes overnight. We need short, medium and long-term plans.”

She highlights the importance of early intervention, education, community-based support, and working across health, housing, social care and the voluntary sector, and sees neighbourhood working as a chance to reshape support around how people actually live.

Having lived in Walsall herself for more than 30 years, Tina’s connection to the borough is deeply personal.

“I stayed because I like the people and I want services to be good enough that I’d be happy for my own family to use them.”

She believes people shouldn’t have to struggle to access the support they need, and that professionals should be well placed to guide them to the right help at the right time.

Outside of work, Tina describes herself as part of the “sandwich generation”,  juggling grandchildren on one side and an elderly parent on the other. She loves travel, adventure and making the most of life having zip-lined, paraglided in the Dolomites and tackled some truly breathtaking experiences, although she draws the line at parachute jumping.

She has two daughters who are both following in her footsteps into social work, and two grandsons. When she’s not travelling, she enjoys spending time with her family and her two Labrador dogs.

Tina’s hope for neighbourhood working is “a shared responsibility, where people contact one person, and the system works around them.”

For Tina, partnership working isn’t about structures. It’s about trust, relationships and making sure people get the support they need before crisis hits, so they can live well and independently for as long as possible.