Jill’s blog of burning issues: Our future

The second of Jill's 'burning issues' blogs with this one focussing on the future

Welcome to the second of my ‘burning issues’ blogs. These blogs are designed to let you know what we are doing about the burning issues you highlighted at the recent Listening Events, along with feedback from the Your Voice Counts online conversations, the Staff Survey and the Staff Friends and Family Test.

My last blog focussed on support for staff and teams, in particular resilience, appraisals and coaching. The next area I’d like to address is our future, which will of course now be led by Dr Sara Munro, who was appointed as Chief Executive last week.

At the listening events, you told me you wanted a clear understanding of ‘where we’re going’, openness and transparency, to be involved in the changes and to be given support to adapt. The Trust’s five-year strategy will be ready for consultation at the end of July, and in the meantime I want to use this blog to set out our direction of travel, the forces that influence it, and how staff are playing their part in re-imagining our future.

Where are we now?
Health and social care is changing. There needs to be a change in the way that care is delivered, a change in the way the system operates, and a change in how we work with other organisations if we are to effectively meet the needs of the people we serve.

At the beginning of the year I highlighted our three key priorities for the year ahead:

1. Support and engage staff to improve people’s health and lives
2. Meet CQC fundamental standards and improve quality through learning
3. Work with partners to develop a clear plan for the Trust’s future direction

These priorities will guide our work in the short term and provide day-to-day focus while we, alongside our service users, carers, staff and stakeholders, design a plan to take us through the next five years.

Where we’re going
There are many local and national plans, policies and initiatives that we must be mindful of when we develop our plan for the future. These include the Five Year Forward View, Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the Leeds Mental Health Framework.

At the end of 2015, every health and social care system in the country was asked to come together to create their own local blueprint for implementing the Five Year Forward View. These plans, called Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs), are place-based, multi-year plans built around the needs of local populations.

In Leeds, this means all commissioners and provider organisations like the Trust and the local authority will plan, agree, and commit to how we will improve people’s health, improve care and quality of service, improve productivity and close the financial gap, together. The plan includes workstreams focussing on prevention and proactive care, rapid response to changing needs and efficient and effective secondary care. Our local Leeds plan, which sits within the wider West Yorkshire STP footprint, will be submitted to NHS England in June. Once this is published I’ll make sure we share the details.

For our community services in Leeds, we are working closely with the Leeds clinical commissioning groups, GP practices, Leeds Community Healthcare, Leeds City Council and third sector partners to develop plans to test out new models of care that bring together primary and community-based services into “multi-specialty community providers”. This is an exciting development that gives us the opportunity to deliver real parity of esteem for people with mental health problems by providing a range of services for people wrapped around primary care. The plans are in the very early phase of development, but could become the standard model of care, building on the neighbourhood teams that already provide integrated health and social care for older people.

Your Voice Counts: re-imagining our future
You asked for openness and transparency, and that was a key consideration when we launched the Your Voice Counts website. This ‘crowdsourcing’ system allows people to openly contribute to discussions online. Popular ideas get voted up, less popular ones are voted down. All the comments are visible to anyone who logs on and anyone can comment, suggest or have their say on there. It’s important that everyone has their say, and so face-to-face conversations are also taking place with those service users and stakeholders who are unable to access digital systems. The online conversation, along with plans and initiatives outlined above, will all form the platform on which our five year strategy will be written. You’ve already fed into phase one of the conversation during April and May, and phase two – ‘what can we stop, start, or do differently?’ – will be launched at the end of this month.

What next?
There are some immediate actions we’ll be taking around our three key priorities, and these will be complemented with actions falling out of the Your Voice Counts conversations. These include developing new ways to recruit and retain talented staff and reduce our reliance on agency staffing; service improvement plans like the work currently underway in our Older People’s Services; and further developing seven day services, including a new in-house extended pharmacy service.

You can see the full list of actions for this year in our High Level Action Plan (part of our Operational Plan). Information about these initiatives will be shared through the Trustwide briefing, on Staffnet, and at your team meetings.

Watch this space for more information about the next phase of Your Voice Counts at the end of this month, and the details of the draft strategy which will be available for consultation at the end of July.

With a shared understanding of where we are going, we’ll be more likely to pull in the same direction with purpose and passion. A huge thank you to everybody for your continued contributions and for helping to re-imagine our Trust’s future.

Jill Copeland
Interim Chief Executive