Ruby Smith Head of Co-design and Improvement
Organisation: South Yorkshire Housing Association
- GenerationQ
- 6
About me
Ruby is a GenerationQ Fellow and Head of Co-design and Improvement at South Yorkshire Housing Association.
Ruby is an experienced senior leader in housing, health and social care. Previously she worked in social care at Sheffield City Council and children’s services at Kensington and Chelsea Council.
Ruby joined South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) as Head of Personalisation in 2013. SYHA is a social landlord with approximately 6,000 homes across Sheffield. The LiveWell department combines housing, health and care expertise to provide person-centred, integrated health and housing solutions.
Ruby is part of the senior leadership team at SYHA, leading the Co-Design and Improvement team to deliver a range of co-designed health integration projects, including Over2You, EatWell and Ageing Better. She also works with a range of organisations, including Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Sheffield Universities, to facilitate patient involvement in their work.
As part of her role at SYHA, Ruby is interested in leading improvement in health commissioning: ‘I would like to improve commissioning by introducing co-design, and integrating commissioners with patients and experts in data analytics and behavioural insights.’ The aims of this work include increasing the personalisation of health services and reducing health inequalities.
Ruby has a passion for improving health systems and services using person-centred approaches, and looks forward to furthering her academic knowledge of improvement through the GenerationQ Fellowship: ‘I expect to benefit from the programme by developing deeper contextual knowledge of improvement in practice across different health settings. I also hope to explore ways of embedding an improvement culture across the organisation through effective leadership.’
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