Sara’s blog – September 2018

This month, our Chief Executive, Sara Munro, talks about the newly refurbished Ward 5 at the Becklin Centre, our forthcoming Health and Safety inspection and the Love Arts Festival in October.

Welcome to my blog for September. I’m going to start with a bit of recognition about our staff who go above and beyond the call of duty, especially those who often work behind the scenes to make sure we’re able to offer the great care we aspire to.

We recently welcomed staff and service users back to a fully refurbished Ward 5 at the Becklin Centre, following a small fire there earlier in the year. I visited the unit just prior to the transfer and met with the estates team and ward manager.

Whilst the ward staff have been great in how they’ve rolled with the upheaval, we really need to recognise our colleagues in estates, transport and our facilities partners at Interserve who’ve pulled out all the stops, and quickly, to fully refurbish the ward. They’ve made adaptions to support a more therapeutic environment including autism-friendly fixtures and fittings.  I want to reiterate our thanks to the transport team who have supported staff and patients so well whilst we’ve been using Daisy Hill in Bradford, including working out of hours on many occasions.

Health and Safety inspection

We’ll be welcoming a team from the Health and Safety Executive in October who’ll be conducting an inspection programme to assess how we’re identifying and managing risks posed to staff through violence, aggression and musculoskeletal disorders (MSK).  A project group has been established to manage and co-ordinate the inspection and further information will be shared about the visit when we know more.

Their inspection is timely as we’ve just launched a series of health and wellbeing roadshows for staff, offering mini health checks, exercise sessions, advice from our in house physio and even free massages at some sites.

MSK problems are our second biggest cause of absence and cost us around £430,000 in the last 12 months in sick pay alone. We are therefore keen to understand how we’re doing and how we can improve in this area.

Looking after our staff is one of our main workforce priorities. In case you missed it, check out this short video about the work of our staff health and wellbeing group and how they’re making a difference.

CQC Leeds system review

In the next few weeks the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will be carrying out a review of the local health and care system in Leeds. They will be particularly focussing on the care for older people aged over 65, including those living with dementia.

The CQC team will be in Leeds on 25 and 26 September to meet with service users and carers including visiting several community groups across the city to hear what people have to say. They will then return week commencing 15 October to conduct focus groups with staff, interviews with senior leaders and visits to services.

Whilst they will be looking at the experiences of people living with dementia, we were disappointed to learn that their review will not include local mental health or specialist mental health services, and we feel this is a huge missed opportunity.

People working in health and care across Leeds are being given an opportunity to tell the CQC about their experiences via a short survey.

Celebrating mental well-being through art

The Love Arts Festival is due to take over Leeds City Centre for 10 days in October. Over 100 artists will be celebrating wellbeing and mental health in a truly diverse range of venues: from Leeds City Museum to St Johns Centre, from The Tetley to Brewdog.

Now in its eighth year, the festival has gone from strength to strength. It now includes exhibitions, workshops, gigs, drama, and films that help people connect with the vibrant cultural life of Leeds.

New eating disorders and children’s services showing early success

As part of my role with the West Yorkshire Mental Health Collaborative (a partnership of four mental health and community trusts) I’ve seen some really encouraging performance from two new care models.

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), led by Leeds Community Trust, and the new CONNECT adult eating disorders service, led by us, are both delivering improvements in terms of reduced length of stay and reducing out of area placements. This is fantastic news so soon after launching.

The eating disorder service is realising savings above those already invested and is exploring the creation of new advanced nurse practitioner role to enhance their service offer. The savings made by the CAMHS new care model will be invested across the community CAMHS teams in additional roles to support new ways of working, with further investment identified in staff training and development in areas such as self-harm.

The mental health collaborative has also been successful in securing workforce investment in terms of suicide prevention training, mental health first aider training and investment in peer support worker roles. We’re grateful for some excellent input and, in some cases, leadership from the third sector to develop the bids for this money.  Leeds has also received investment to pilot new roles in occupational therapy and psychology in primary care which could be rolled out to other areas if successful.

Getting with the patient flow

My focus, along with other senior leaders, in the past two months has been on the results from work on patient flow in the Leeds system, including mental health. A programme of work has now been agreed and I am holding colleagues to account on behalf of the system for progress against the plan.  Key areas of focus are effective discharge decision making, better use of existing services including beds and community health and care services, reducing complexity and time for funding decisions and capacity for complex nursing placements.

Reasons to be proud

Positive Practice in Mental Health Awards

I am delighted that three of our teams have been shortlisted in this year’s national awards for positive practice in mental health.

Our Rainbow Alliance has been shortlisted in the category of Addressing Inequalities in mental health. The specialist personality disorder service has been shortlisted in the category of Specialist Community Services for adults with complex needs, and the new CONNECT Eating Disorder service has been shortlisted in the Community Eating Disorder services category.

I’m looking forward to heading over to Liverpool for the ceremony on 12 October. Good luck everyone.

Campaigning doc nominated trainee of the year

Well done to Dr Ahmed Hankir who has been shortlisted for core psychiatric trainee of the year in the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ annual awards. As well as being a full time clinician, Dr Hankir is also a campaigner and describes himself as a “psychiatry doctor, communicator, researcher and survivor of psychological torture . . . passionate about challenging stigma and Islamophobia”. Find out more about Dr Hankir or follow him on Twitter where he tweets as The Wounded Healer.  The ceremony will be held at the Royal College in London on 7 November. Good luck Ahmed.