Sara's blog - January 2019

Our Chief Executive Dr Sara Munro posts her first blog of 2019. Sara gives a summary of her engagement with clinical services including Inpatients, Crisis, Gender Identity, Leeds Autism Diagnostic Service and Forensics, talks about tackling bullying and harassment, improvements in fire safety, workforce strategy and finishes with two fantastic reasons to be proud – this month featuring our Library and Knowledge Services and Ward 4, an older people’s ward, at The Mount.

I should start with a Happy New Year to you all – which I know is a bit late but as this is my first blog of 2019, it feels appropriate.

We are now half way through winter (can you believe it) and staff across health and care services are doing a fantastic job whilst under the usual pressures.

Over Christmas and New Year I visited our inpatient and crisis services to check in with staff and see how things were for them. I found them in high spirits and it was great to hear how the ward staff had made extra efforts to support patients to either get home for Christmas or to make the day special for those that couldn’t. We know Christmas can be especially difficult for our service users, and our staff certainly demonstrated the value of caring.

Our Gender Identity Service is a service under pressure which we’ve been discussing at our Board meetings for a while. They’re experiencing high levels of demand, referrals exceeding provision resulting in long waiting times, staff shortages, and an ongoing national review for a new service specification.

I spent some time with the team to understand the service in more detail, the challenges faced by them, what support is in place and what more we can do. There are plans to improve the support provided to the team over the coming months which I welcome. I also applaud their courage in recently participating in a radio documentary about gender identity service provision across the North of England. It’s going out on the Heart radio network and possibly LBC too.

Similar to Gender services the Leeds Autism Diagnostic Service has seen a significant increase in referrals over time and is exploring ways in which it can be more responsive without compromising quality and effectiveness. On a visit to them I saw some of the ongoing improvement work the team is doing which includes piloting a quality assurance/accreditation process with the National Autistic Society. Keep up the great work guys.

I was also delighted to attend an event in early January with our Forensic Services from both Leeds and York who were showcasing progress on their quality improvement journey. Two years ago they were a service with real problems relating to performance, quality and staff culture. It is clear that the work led by the service management team has had a fantastic impact. You can read the full presentation from the event here.

Culture Club?

Boy George

Photo Credit Ralph Arvesen www.lostoak.com

Our senior leadership team (SLT) took some time to consider a recent report by ACAS on bulling and harassment within the Trust. We commissioned ACAS to do a review and present a report to us following feedback from staff, including in last year’s staff survey.

I wanted to understand what senior leaders can and should be doing to improve the experience of all our staff. One action we agreed was to establish a group that I will chair that integrates the existing work programmes across the trust. My working title for the group is the Culture Club although please don’t expect Boy George to be performing!

The discussion at SLT was an approach we are adopting to focus on our ‘wicked issues’, coming up with a collective approach and holding ourselves to account on impact.

Fire safety

We’re nearing completion on our fire safety work and the group looking at this has developed some great improvements. They include:

  • New training for inpatient services
  • Daily environmental checks and clearer guidance on personal belongings
  • Additional storage space for patients who stay a longer time with us
  • Additional training for staff around reducing restrictive interventions as staff didn’t feel confident in continually searching patients for contraband products

The risk of fire can never be eliminated in our organisation but it was clear that there was more we could do to share and embed learning across the Trust from the incidents we had last year. We have shared progress with the West Yorkshire Fire Service which has been well received. Their own investigation continues and they will take into consideration the work we have done.

CQC system wide review in Leeds

The Care Quality Commission’s review of the Leeds health and care system was published in December. There were both areas of strength and areas for improvement.

The report highlights the strong relationships between system leaders, including the third sector, which is helping drive forward improvements for the system. They were also extremely positive about the strategic direction of the city, and how that brings us together as one health and care system, through the leadership of the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Board and our ambitious Health and Wellbeing Strategy. The good support available in care homes for people with dementia and complex needs was also highlighted.

They asked us to focus more attention on a number of things including:

  • Developing a workforce strategy to shape supply and demand
  • Peoples’ experiences across care pathways and their journey across the system
  • Making sure our quality audits and training procedures cover dignity and privacy issues

And speaking of a workforce strategy . . .

I am pleased the CQC highlighted workforce as an issue for focus. Being the system lead for workforce I’ve been overseeing a stocktake of work to date and putting in place arrangements for the development of a workforce strategy for the city.

This will be overseen by the new Leeds Health and Care Academy, and the directors of workforce from the three NHS trusts, CCG and local authority.

If you haven’t heard of the Leeds Health and Care Academy yet, hopefully soon you will! It’s launching in April this year – here’s a quick summary of what to expect.

Reasons to be proud

High Standards in our Library and Knowledge Services

For the second year running our Library and Knowledge Service has achieved 99% in the NHS Library Quality Assurance Framework compliance result.

At the same time they also won the innovation award at the Yorkshire and Humber Health Library and Knowledge Network Christmas Study day for the work they did building the Trust’s Quality Improvement bookcase on our intranet. The QI Bookcase has links to services and information to support the development and evaluation of services and teams, share organisational knowledge, and make it easier to find the information staff need.

Library service receiving award

Members of the team are pictured here with David Steward, Director of Health Libraries North from Health Education England.

Family praise older people’s ward at The Mount

In January I received an email from a relative of someone who received care on one of our older people’s wards at The Mount. I think this message speaks for itself so I have included it in full here with names removed to protect confidentiality.

Dear Dr Munro,

My mum, [name removed], sadly passed away at The Mount in December, but I have nothing but praise for the truly outstanding care and compassion shown to her by all the doctors and staff on Ward 4.

Mum had two lengthy stays during 2018, and despite her continued distress, we always knew she was in safe hands and being looked after by a team of outstanding individuals.

The examples I could share are too numerous to mention, but should you care to discuss things in more detail I would be delighted to speak with you at some convenient point.

In addition to the doctors and staff, the Ward Manager, Julie Lynch, and Sister Nikki Murphy were sources of tremendous support throughout very difficult times, and I feel it would be very appropriate if you could please pass on our family’s heartfelt appreciation and gratitude.

With kind regards,

[Name removed]

I have shared this with the matron, ward manager and sister who will also share with all the team members. I have added our own thanks for what they do and the difference they clearly make in people’s lives, especially at such a difficult time.


Find out more about our Chief Executive Dr Sara Munro