Sara's blog - January 2018

This month, our Chief Exec Sara Munro talks CQC inspection, exciting new services for young people and veterans, and becoming an ‘anchor institution’ to support inclusive growth in Leeds.

This is my first blog of 2018 so a belated Happy New Year to anyone who I’ve not seen yet. We are in the midst of our well-led Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection as I write. Having visited a lot of our services over the past two months, staff seemed well-prepared and they were looking forward to sharing their great work with the CQC.

I’ve seen lots of examples of work to improve patient care and also to improve staff morale; like Safewards being applied very well to improve patient and staff safety on our acute wards. Also, services that have had peer review visits spoke very positively about them and the feedback is being used to drive further improvements.

Speaking of morale, we had our very own Staff Santa going out and about before Christmas delivering treats and greetings cards to staff in clinical services. Thanks to Tracey Needham (our staff engagement lead, pictured with staff from the Becklin Centre) for donning the red coat and driving her sleigh around Leeds and York. It sounds like the treats were very well received and there have already been requests for a staff Easter Bunny!

 

 

News from across the patch

West Yorkshire’s new £13m child and adolescent mental health unit will be based at the St Mary’s Hospital site in Armley, Leeds. The 22-bed facility will reduce the number of patients traveling long distances for treatment and work is expected to start on the new unit in early 2019. As the owners of the site we’re looking forward to working with Leeds Community Healthcare Trust and others to finalise plans and develop a modern, fit for purpose facility of which we can all be proud.

Watch out for some fantastic news about our new West Yorkshire-wide eating disorders service during Eating Disorders Awareness Week in February.

Nicola Lees, who is chief exec at Bradford District Care Trust, will be retiring in April. Nicola had been the chief exec lead for the West Yorkshire Mental Health Collaborative, which is an emerging partnership between the four principal providers of NHS mental health and learning disability services in West Yorkshire. I have agreed to take on this role to provide continuity and ongoing leadership. My colleague Susan Tyler has also agreed to take on the lead HR role for the collaborative.

We’ll be having an event for governors and non-executives on 5 February where we’ll run through how this partnership will work in practice and how we’ll manage decision-making.

Becoming an ‘anchor institution’ for Leeds

We’ve been asked by Tom Riordan, the chief executive of Leeds City Council, to become an ‘anchor institution’ for the city. It’s all part of their inclusive growth strategy which aims to deliver better outcomes for people, drawing on the talents of, and benefitting, all our citizens and communities.

Part of this is to ensure that the city’s major anchor institutions, like us, are embedded in, and working for, communities and the local economy. The council has partnered with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to design a programme that will help to make this idea a reality.

I believe we should get behind this and focus on the wider contribution we can make to address disadvantage in local communities.

We’ve got a lot to contribute to this agenda, particularly after we were ranked 34 in the country at the recent Excellence in Diversity Awards. The awards recognise true leaders in the inclusion and diversity field, focusing on representation at senior management level. The Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers list also recognises the outstanding efforts of employers in “attracting and retaining a truly diverse workforce, achieving equality, diversity and inclusion in its purest form”.

Improving the health and lives of our veterans

We’ll soon be delivering a new mental health service for armed forces veterans in the north of England.  What makes this really exciting news is that this is an entirely new service for people who’ve made a huge contribution serving their country.  The initial contract is for two years with an option to extend for another two.  Colleagues are now motoring to get the service ready to receive its first patients in the spring.

January also saw us publicly sign up to Step into Health – a fantastic initiative to help former armed forces personnel to find a new career in the NHS. Our Deputy Director of Workforce, Lindsay Jensen (front row second from right), along with fellow NHS colleagues, joined the Duke of Cambridge at the national public launch on 18 January.
Positive Practice in Mental Health

I recently attended an event at the Houses of Parliament to launch a new positive practice in mental health guide.  This guide brings together all the outstanding work across mental health, including non-NHS provision, and is accessible for anyone to use and learn from. I’m excited that our Trust will be hosting the first annual convention on positive practice for mental health on 10 May in Leeds and colleagues are working on this with the positive practice collaborative.

You can contact Sara