CEO leadership blog for August 2025
Our Chief Exec Dr Sara Munro has published her leadership blog for August 2025.
Hello,
There is so much happening in health and care strategy and policy at the moment it’s difficult to know where to start.
I guess it’s best to start with the big news – that we welcomed the publication of the 10 Year Health Plan in early July. It sets out a “bold, ambitious and necessary new course for the NHS”, seizing the “opportunities provided by new technology, medicines, and innovation to deliver better care for all patients – no matter where they live or how much they earn – and better value for taxpayers.”
At its core are the “three shifts”, which are from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and treatment to prevention. Some updates that caught my eye included:
- The foundation trust model will be relaunched, and mature systems will be able to develop as an ‘integrated health organisation’ where population budgets are collectively managed,
- The new Mental Health Act is now expected to receive royal assent in the autumn, which is also when we should expect to see a new workforce strategy, and
- The development of modern service frameworks will begin later this year including for mental health.
This Trust’s Priorities
As national strategy has been coming out, my senior leadership colleagues and I have been dropping into team management meetings across the Trust sharing the Trust’s 14 annual priorities for this year. Our ask of our management teams was to share these with their colleagues.
If you want to see what they are, have a look at this short presentation document.
Review of health and care providers in Leeds
The Leeds Provider Partnership Review launched on 30 May and focuses on the three NHS providers in Leeds, the Leeds Office of the Integrated Care Board, and Leeds City Council. Now the 10-year health plan has been published, we can consider it within the blueprint we want to create for the city and what the roadmap should look like to achieve this. We’re hoping to have a draft report in September.
Until this review concludes, I have taken over as temporary interim Chief Exec of Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust following the departure of their previous CEO Selina Douglas earlier this year.
And we recently heard that Professor Phil Wood, CEO at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust announced he’ll be taking retirement at the end of this year. Phil will remain committed to the Leeds Provider Partnership development during this time, and this will be one of the priority areas of work for his future successor.
Finance update
At Trust Board on 31 July, we heard how the Trust is just about on plan to achieve its efficiency targets this year to break even. This includes reducing our expenditure (also known as run rate) by £18.5million.
Unsurprisingly ‘delivery of our financial efficiency programme’ is one of our top priorities for 2025/6. We aim to do this through reducing out of area placement costs, reducing agency costs, and finding savings across non-clinical operations.
Positive focus on our Older People’s Service
Also, at last month’s Trust Board we had a fantastic focus on our Older People’s Services.
The Board were treated to a most uplifting presentation from the son of a former inpatient, and two members of staff from Ward 4 at The Mount where she was treated.
We heard how a mixture of great expertise, applying best practice, perseverance and patience made a massive difference to the patient.
Later on, we also heard how the Older People’s Service has been on a journey to re-establish leadership, clarify direction, and embed shared values and behaviours. And there have been some really positive results.
Care Services concerns
Our main areas of concern for our care services continue to be consistent. They are:
- Acute flow, delayed discharges and out of area placements – which has been affected by the temporary closure of Oasis House – a crisis refuge in Leeds and a key alternative to admission to inpatient services,
- Ongoing problems with our enteral feeding supplies,
- Crisis Resolution assessments within 4 hours,
- Service users seen at least 5 times in first week of crisis contact,
- Emergency Department waits for mental health assessment, and
- The provision of Early Intervention in Psychosis Services delivered by our partners Aspire.
Making an unwelcome return to this list was industrial action – specifically where resident doctors recently walked out for five days. Thankfully colleagues are now well-versed in managing such episodes and we managed to avoid any major disruption.
Reasons to be proud
Shine and Thrive
A summer roadshow focusing on staff wellbeing and recognition has been visiting our sites, with some spectacular pictures of our People Engagement Team sharing the vibes of summer. Here they are at our Clifton House site in York where staff enjoyed games, snacks, sharing recognition and prizes.
Our first supported interns
A big thank you to all those who’ve supported a wave of new interns with special education needs to gain experience of the workplace. Thank you to our Learning Disability Admin Team (pictured) and others for hosting them. We will be welcoming three new interns to the Trust in October 2025.
Team of the month is . . .
Well done to the Community Rehabilitation Enhanced Support Team (CREST) were named as our most recent Team of the Month for “exemplifying excellence through their commitment to wellbeing, inclusivity, and compassionate care.” Service users praised their flexible, person-centred support, and their teamwork ensures outstanding, personalised care.
Individual of the month is . . .
And well done to Nia Trafford, Senior Healthcare Support Worker, at our Leeds-based young people’s inpatient unit Red Kite View who is our most recent individual of the month. Nia’s colleagues said they are “amazing” and treat “every young person as an individual and develop really creative and flexible approaches to working with them and developing positive therapeutic relationships.”
Success at Positive Practice in Mental Health Awards
Our Pathway Development Service was highly commended in the Complex Needs category for their innovative video triage and consultation initiative. Principle Clinical Psychologist Laura Eggleton described it as “a fantastic acknowledgment given there were over 500 nominations across the awards.”
Annual General Meeting & Celebration Event 2025
I was joined by around 70 people at this year’s AGM & Celebration Event on 29 July where we were treated to some fascinating presentations including on how the Trust is using artificial intelligence for the benefit of staff and service users (which provoked a lot of debate in the room).
Read a quick summary of the event on our website where you can also watch videos from each of our presenters.
Page last updated: 9th Mar 2026 4:34pm