Improving Together: CEO Caroline Donovan's Blog - 18 December
I’m delighted to be able to share some ‘hot off the press’ news relating to progress in our rapid and ongoing developments to improve our organisational culture. I can confirm that we have now appointed two people from within the Trust to oversee the clinical restructure of NSFT, an important project to lead the co-design of place-based, clinically led services (you may remember I talked about this in my last blog). They are Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist Sohail Abrar and Andy Mack, Service Director for Secure Services. Sohail and Andy are both highly respected, inspirational leaders and will be working with teams across the organisation to secure your engagement with and input to this vital programme. This will begin in the new year with workshops led by Andy and Sohail planned for January. I have no doubt they are going to do a fantastic job and I look forward to keeping you informed of progress.
Last week, we held the first meeting of our new Trust Management Board. This hugely important body brings together the medical, nursing and operational leadership of our clinical care groups with our executive team, so that strategy and decision making is driven by those leading our frontline services. I am really excited by this development which I know will have a significant, positive impact on the way the Trust operates, and in turn, improvements for our service users and carers.
And, we have just advertised within NSFT the lead roles for Listening into Action programme. Again, we are looking for influential, credible leaders who are keen to play a vital part in this organisation-wide development programme to secure bottom-up change for the better. There has been lots of interest in these roles, people are speaking to me directly about them, I have been really impressed with the massive enthusiasm for this new programme and I am confident we will be able to appoint some great people. If you are interested you can find more information here. The closing date or applications is 3 January 2024.
I am continuing with my visits to services to meet staff and service users – perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of my job – and last week I visited secure services. As always, it was lovely to meet staff and service users and listen to what they had to say. Thank you to everyone for showing me round your wards and services, and to Lead Nurse Lindsey Sadler and Service Director Andy Mack for helping to showcase such great teams.
Did you receive your copy of our new stakeholder newsletter ‘Better Together’? It was published and widely distributed last week. I hope you did and that you enjoyed it. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can access it here. It is very important that we keep all our stakeholders informed about what we are doing, and also, demonstrating some of the great work of our staff. Don’t forget to let us know what you think, how we can make it even better, and if you would like to submit an article. We’d love to hear from you.
Finally, this is my last blog before Christmas. I’d like to take the opportunity to send everyone Season’s Greetings. I hope you are able to have some quality time with your families, friends and loved ones. Of course, many of our staff will be working and I’d like to extend a thank you all on behalf of myself and the Trust Board. I know that you will be going the extra mile to be there for our service users and carers.
Best wishes, until next time,
Caroline