Improving Together: Acknowledging and reflecting on positive outcomes | News and events

I am still receiving feedback about our leadership conference and the positive vibe shared with so many that we are starting to change as an organisation whilst being very aware of the journey ahead and showing openness and humility for the improvements we still need to make.

I continue to be blown away by the examples of the wonderful staff we have. It’s so important we continue to recognise and celebrate our people and remind ourselves that whilst we have lots of work to do to become a safer, kinder and better organisation, there are examples of care and outcomes for our service users, families and carers we should be proud of. I’ll explain more later in my blog.

Improving Health    

I was really pleased to lead our latest Hear to Listen session on 13 June 2024 which focussed on our new Trust strategy. If you didn’t get chance to take part or haven’t been able to watch the session back, please do so as the recording is available on our all staff intranet. Our Trust strategy captures our four Trust wide priorities, our large-scale change programmes and focuses on the outcomes we want to see over the next five years, to help us become a safer, kinder and better organisation.

One of our large-scale change programmes is to make sure we review and learn from deaths to help us improve safety and quality across our organisation. Our legacy learning from deaths review of mortality data will conclude on 30 June and we will publish a full review report as part of our Board papers in public on 18 July 2024. This is a vitally important piece of work and one which I have continued to have oversight of. I have continued to lead our call-to-action meetings to make sure all our legacy mortality data review is on track. The learning and associated actions from this work are vital; we will share and publish this report next month.

Our Council of Governors are due to meet next week, and I am pleased that our refreshed membership strategy will be discussed. Members are a very important part of our Trust. Our draft membership strategy aims to support and recognise the importance of diverse membership across Norfolk and Suffolk, who bring a range of views and experience to help us make better decisions. I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in developing this strategy and to all our members who continue to inspire and challenge us.

Earlier this year, I met with Susan Willgoss  at an event in Gorleston, we got chatting and I heard Susan’s heartbreaking story about the loss of her son to suicide. Susan continues to champion awareness raising about suicide across Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as the rest of the country and is now working with us as an Advisor for Suicide Prevention with Lived Experience. It is vital we listen and take action on these experiences, making sure we learn as an organisation. Susan has shared her vital experience with a number of other Trusts across the country, as well as the national 2023 Suicide Prevention Alliance Conference.

I’d like to thank Susan for continuing to share her experience and raising awareness of the importance of suicide prevention. Further work on this important area to spread learning and understanding across our organisation will continue to take place.

Improving Care

I’d like to give special thanks to Katherine Falk and her team following a very successful event which took place on Tuesday, 18 June 2024 where the GreenMinds  team welcomed into the Wedgewood Therapy Garden, a range of individuals and organisations whose support has enabled the garden to be built and maintained. I would like to extend my personal thanks to Katherine, Mossy and the fantastic team of individuals, volunteers, partners and organisations for their invaluable contribution, commitment and leadership. The garden is based in Bury St Edmunds and offers areas for peaceful reflection and hubs for therapeutic activities and social interaction. It really is fantastic how the garden is being used by our service users, families and carers to help their recovery journey.

I would like to say a huge well done to one of our Clinical Psychologists supporting young people, Rollinson Rebecca and Adam Graham, Senior Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and the Better sleep team . A couple of weeks ago, they attended the Health Service Journal Awards as they were a finalist in the ‘Improving Mental Health through Digital’ HSJ Digital Award category. Their hard work, commitment and dedication to delivering excellent support and care for those experiencing sleep difficulties across Norfolk and Waveney is vital and I was truly heartened to read about many of our service users, families and carers they have worked with to help promote better sleep. Their innovative partnership work really demonstrates how we are improving access to enhance sleep outcomes locally and also highlights the importance of collaboration and partnership working with our system partners.

Last week, I was really heartened to read a lovely thank you letter from a carer whose wife was admitted to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital recently and received outstanding care from both QEH and staff from our organisation. One particular quote from the letter really stood out for me: “I really can’t thank you all enough; your staff went above and beyond – they were kind, compassionate and really helped my wife and I. Thank you so much.” We have much work to do linked to our improvement programmes to improve safety, quality and outcomes, but receiving letters like this remind us that there are lots of examples of how we are providing great care and making sure outcomes for our service users, families and carers are as good as they can be. Working with our service users, families, carers and our staff, like Susan and the carer who took their time to write to us is so important.

You will have noticed in your diaries, a Hear to Listen invite at 3pm on Wednesday 26 June 2024. The session will provide an update on the implementation of our Future Leadership Structure, and where we are at with our phase one recruitment and interview process. We will also share details about the launch of our phase two consultation; please do look out for this invitation and join if you can.

You will know that we are implementing our new structure in phases, with the phase one consultation complete; we are now into the assessment and recruitment stage of phase one. We will share as much detail as we can on Wednesday and I would like to remind everyone that we can only share information at various stages and points because of the important process we need to go through, particularly for our colleagues in scope for consultation. We are not able to share every bit of detail, for example, about what posts will be included in phase three yet because we can only do that directly with staff who are in scope and being consulted. We will continue to share as much detail as we can though and we will be holding more in person and online sessions where all staff members can continue to closely engage with our clinical leads for our Future Leadership Structure, our wider Executive team members, along with our HR and OD teams. 

Improving Culture

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague Gary O’Hare on being recognised in the King’s birthday honours list for his outstanding contribution to mental health and disability services. I am really pleased to see his hard work and dedication to improving patient care acknowledged. As a Trust, we are grateful to have the benefit of Gary’s expertise supporting improvements to our patient safety and governance work to help us provide safer, kinder and better care.

I’d like to take a few moments to shine a light on a brilliant example of how our staff are embracing our work to improve and improve the culture of our organisation.

Courteney Waring, who is a Community Mental Health Nurse with our Adult Service, came up with the brainwave idea of attaching a large wooden fob to the keys to the medication cabinet at City Anchorage. The initiative has stopped staff from accidentally putting the keys in their pocket and taking them away, which could cause delays for service users waiting for a depot injection while the spare set was retrieved from the safe.

This is a simple change, but it has been welcomed by everyone so far as its also helping staff to save time, providing more timely and better experiences for our service users, families and carers. Well done Courtney and to all our staff identifying and implementing quick wins across our Trust. These small but important changes collectively culminate in supporting a better working environment for our staff and helping us to become a safer, kinder and better organisation.

On Wednesday 12 June, I was delighted to chair our first Inclusion Council. We heard from staff networks about progress we have made and the challenges people continue to face. We agreed that over the next year, our overall priority is to focus on race but continue to prioritise all matters of inclusion. I am also very keen that all our leaders and managers across our organisation give time for staff members who would like to join our staff networks to support our improvements we want to see to become a more inclusive organisation. I am also really pleased that Yvonne Coghill MBE, who presented at our first safer, kinder and better leadership conference has held two listening events for our global majority staff; this is an important part of the work she is supporting us with, focused on race. If you would like to get involved with or find out more about our Employee Networks, please email employee.networks@nsft.nhs.uk or visit our dedicated intranet page.

Improving Value

I have mentioned before that we have many challenges ahead to deliver a significant efficiency programme this year of £17.4 m which equates to 5% of our turnover. There is an expectation across the NHS for this scale of efficiencies to be made and we continue to see this reinforced both locally and across the country.

We are working closely with our Integrated Care Boards to ensure we have plans in place to meet this challenge, that we can achieve our break-even position plan for 2024-25. Whilst this is a big ask, I continue to be impressed with the level of engagement and leadership that has been demonstrated in many teams across our organisation. We have 12 programmes that have been established where we have real opportunities to transform and improve efficiency and value. I am delighted that Saj Minhas joined us last week as our Interim Recovery Director who will lead our efficiency, value and improvement programme work. I would like to see more teams involved in this crucial work and ask that everyone continues to think regularly about efficiencies we can make. Our Trust wide efficiency board which I chair is overseeing this important work on a bi-weekly basis. Please join me in giving Saj a warm welcome.

Finally, a big thank you for everything you continue to do, for your leadership, hard work and commitment to our improvement and transformation journey.

Until next time,

Caroline