Improving Together – CEO Caroline Donovan’s Blog – 15 October 2024
Hi all, and welcome to my latest blog.
I want to start with a thank you to everyone who came to our Annual Meeting on World Mental Health Day at The Carnegie Rooms in Thetford last Thursday. It was great to see so many people coming along to hear all about our progress and our plans for the future.
There was a clear theme of our improvement, with recognition of the progress being made, but an important humility about the change we still need to make to enable us all to be proud of the Trust as a place to work and to receive support, care and treatment.
A big thank you to everyone who attended, and to everyone who worked so hard to make the event a success. Thank you to our staff, service users and others with lived experience who attended to showcase their work. They played a really invaluable role in ensuring the success of the event and helping us shape our services and support us with our improvement journey and ambition to provide safer, kinder better care.
Thank you to everyone who came along to our second NSFT leadership Cascade briefing last week, with almost 200 leaders joining this session. It’s so good to see this level of engagement – if you are a manager, please make sure you join this session with the executive team every month so you can keep your teams informed about what’s going on in our Trust. All colleagues can look forward to hearing the latest updates from this session – these will be shared with all our staff. It would also be great to hear any feedback and suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me by emailing ceo@nsft.nhs.uk.
It’s really important that I mention the continuing challenging financial position across the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS). The East of England Regional Team has taken the decision to place the ICS into the formal NHS England ‘investigation and intervention programme’, often referred to as the ‘I and I’ programme. You might hear this referred to over the coming weeks and months in your teams. Here in NSFT, we are making progress, and our strong EVI (efficiency, value and improvement) programme is starting to deliver, but we have a lot more to do. I know how hard many of you are working on this. Thank you.
Whilst quality of care remains paramount and will not be compromised, there are efficiencies we can still make to contribute to our savings programme this year. I would really like to hear any thoughts and views you have. We are planning to launch more of a campaign approach, and I would really welcome your thoughts on what we could call our work on this, for example, we could consider calling it ‘living within our means’. Let me know any thoughts you have please.
We are very clear as a Board and leadership team that our absolute priority is improving care. The efficiency programme must not compromise that at all. We know from evidence that as we continue to transform our clinical pathways we are likely to reduce duplication, waste and variation which will improve both quality of care and efficiency.
As we continue our improvement journey, it is so important to recognise the improvements that are being made. In this week’s blog, I’ve included a direct example of this and the massive impact compassionate and person centred care has had for one of our service users. I know that everyone is working hard and that we are very focussed on improving care every day. We know we have much more to do, but I wanted to share this to really show how our change in approach has made a real difference to one of our service users:
‘’I think when you have raised concerns it is also important to raise the good things when they take place too as they may be able to be used as an example but also it shows the impact when things are done well. A lot of what I say may seem like basic things but it feels like a big thing when it hasn’t been usual.
What stood out in this phonecall, that I think would benefit others too is:
The person introduced herself, she told me her name, but also her job role and what team she was from.
She explained the purpose of the call, why she was calling properly (and asked me if I had any questions- not happened before).
There was structure to the call and if I didn’t know how to answer she didn’t leave it, she explained further. I struggle with communicating over phone calls and taking in information verbally when I can’t see the other person, so this was helpful because a lot of the time I find it hard to respond quickly and then panic. Other phone calls have been rushed but she gave me time to answer.
She treated me like a person. This should be basic but believe it or not, again, it’s been rare to have that. Didn’t feel like a tick box exercise, it actually felt like a conversation and it felt like she listened to me.
It was person centred, too. She asked me my preferences and asked if anything could make any future calls easier. I was then able to explain again that I find random calls and speaking to lots of different people difficult. She put this on my notes and suggested things that she could write on there which would lessen the stress of any future phone calls. I appreciated that because I felt heard.“
She explained what she would do with the information I told her- again, this was helpful because I didn’t leave the call overthinking and feeling uncertain, not knowing what the point of it was.
I feel like on that call I experienced an example of good care and if this was the standard for all calls, which I hope becomes the case over time, people who are waiting will feel more scaffolded. Of course, waiting lists generally are not ideal, but it makes a difference when the ‘mean time’ is held up by people who demonstrate the values you’d expect from mental health organisations. It’s the first call I’ve had during the last however much time where I didn’t leave the call more anxious and stressed and confused.’’
And finally – please don’t forget to nominate for our staff awards, which have a week left before closing. We have already received over 200 nominations, and I would like to see many more. Please do nominate – it means so much to colleagues who are nominated and so important for us to celebrate success. Please follow this link to nominate a member of NSFT for the Unsung Hero Award.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and for everything you continue to do.
Until next time,
Caroline