Sara's blog - September 2017

Monthly blog from our chief executive, Sara Munro, for September 2017

Hello everyone. I thought I’d share a few thoughts and personal reflections on my first anniversary as chief exec at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

I can honestly say it feels like I’ve been here longer than 12 months.  I mean that in a good way (!) as I feel a strong sense of connection and responsibility for the organisation, our staff and the work we do.

I’ve had such warm welcomes since joining the Trust and people across our patch have been kind in helping me get settled and up to speed. It is hard coming in as the new face when you don’t know people or places but I couldn’t have asked for any more.  The nurse in me automatically thinks to Patricia Benner’s From Novice to Expert framework of competence.  Whilst I am always wary that thinking you are an expert can bring a risk of complacency I no longer feel like a novice or the new person.

The story so far

A lot has happened in the last year, we’ve done some great work and we’ve started some major projects which will shape the coming years. A lot of our focus has been on getting the right governance in place so we can be clear on who makes decisions and where – and how we monitor progress.

I met over 120 staff during the summer as part of my Join the Conversation events and I was encouraged by the level of engagement from colleagues on the front line with their openness, candour and strong commitment and desire to be part of an organisation that delivers outstanding services.

Our senior leadership team considered the feedback from these events on 6 September. In summary, our new values of integrity, caring and simplicity have been well received and there is a high degree of motivation to adopt these in all that we do.

Our job as senior leaders is to role model our values and behaviours in every interaction we have. It sounds obvious – but it’s not as easy as it sounds when you’re under pressure.

Another big theme was how we manage change in the organisation.  Many staff said this was a difficult and challenging experience and can take far too long.  We’ll be taking this forward as a joint piece of work with our staff side representatives.

 

Annual Members’ Day 2017 

Values and behaviours played a big part in our annual members’ day on 19 September. I shared some feedback I’d received on why these as so important as they affect the quality of care and experience of our service users and carers. I was proud to be able to play a film featuring our service users and staff which explored what our values meant to them.

You can watch it here:

We were joined by a wide range of people including members, service users and carers who, in the second half of the afternoon, helped us explore how we can improve the way we listen and respond to feedback. We had some great ideas which colleagues are currently collating.

Trust Strategy

We’ve been reviewing our strategy for some time now and we were intending to bring it to the September board for sign off.  However, following the session we held with our Council of Governors earlier this month we will be making further changes. The session was very valuable – helping us to refocus on the key objectives. We need to rise to the challenge of “keeping it simple” and we aim to bring it back in November.

The trust vision, ambition and values remain unchanged.

Purpose:

Improving health, Improving lives

Vision:

To provide outstanding mental health and learning disability services as an employer of choice

Ambition:

We support our service users and carers, our staff and the communities we serve to live healthy and fulfilling lives.  We want to achieve our personal and professional goals; to live our lives free from stigma and discrimination; and to improve the lives of people with a learning disability and mental ill health.

Values:

Integrity; Caring; Simplicity

 

We have simplified our goals and objectives down to three based on feedback from the board to board:

  1. We deliver great care that is high quality and improves lives
  2. We provide a rewarding and supportive place to work.
  3. We use our resources to deliver effective and sustainable services

 

Director of Nursing

Our Director of Nursing Anthony Deery is moving on to a role with NHS England and NHS Improvement as a clinical advisor to support the NHS Five Year Forward View for mental health. Our board meeting on Thursday 28 September will be Anthony’s last one and I’d like to thank him for all his hard work and commitment to the organisation for the past few years and to wish him well in his new role.

Paul Lumsdon will be joining us as the interim Director of Nursing whilst we go through the recruitment process for a permanent replacement.

 

Reasons to be proud

LegoIn addition to our fantastic annual members’ day on 19 September, there are, as usual, many reasons for us to be proud this month. I can’t list them all but I did have the pleasure recently of spending some time with the Child Oriented Mental Health Interventions Centre (COMIC) research team led by Professor Barry Wright, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist from our national deaf service. They now have several National Institute for Health Research and Medical Research Council studies on the go including a fascinating trial of LEGO-based therapy for autism.

Research and development is an important area for our organisation and, whilst there’s much more we can do to support this across the Trust, we should be proud of what this team has achieved.

 

Contact Sara