Hello everyone, welcome to my blog. I’ve a lot to tell you about.
Last week, the Trust was focused on ‘Break the Cycle’ – an initiative where all services worked together to ‘reset’ our position in advance on the forthcoming, long bank holiday. The results of this effort have been very positive. By mid-week we’d seen more discharges leading to a 26% reduction in admission waiting times; 56% reduction in A&E breaches; and a 51% reduction in s136 breaches. Importantly, we’d also successfully brought back 10 patients from out of area placements into our local facilities.
At the start of the week, our executive team visited many of our services to see first-hand their contributions to the initiative and to recognise their consistent commitment to our service users and families. I visited the Bed Hub (pictured) and was hugely impressed with what I saw there. I fully expect that some changes made for Break the Cycle will be retained – for example, it was great to see locality operations directors rotating to offer on-hand leadership to the Bed Hub Team. I’m sure this will have been a welcome and effective intervention with a hugely positive impact.
The scale of the effort involved in this cannot be underestimated and I want to say a massive thank you to everyone, our staff and our partners, including those in local authorities, who made the initiative such a success. We now want to make sure we keep up the momentum.
The Trust Board met in public this week too – you can read my CEO report here. We will be publishing key messages from this meeting later this week (as well as the minutes and papers) and sharing these widely so that you can stay informed and involved with Board business.
In advance of Carers’ Week (6th – 12th June) our patient story this time was a very powerful and moving account from a carer’s perspective. ‘Doris’ is the carer of her son who has schizophrenia and her story focused on the importance of communication with families and carers and the profound effect it can have on outcomes. Despite poor experiences in the past, Doris reported that more recent involvement with the Trust had been much improved. She has been consulted, informed and made to feel part of the team caring for her son. As a direct result of this her son’s care has been much better and the outcome – for both Doris and her son – has been ‘remarkable’. This is so good to hear, and I truly appreciate Doris sharing her story, and all the staff involved in achieving this great improvement.
Amongst many other things, we also received the Speak Out Safely Annual Report. I wanted to highlight this as it is such an important indicator of a healthy organisational culture. We heard that there has been a 30% increase in the number of concerns being raised. This is welcome and confirms what we heard in the annual staff survey.
It doesn’t mean that there is a huge jump in the number of concerns staff may have; it means that many more staff feel supported and confident to raise any concerns – and we can then address them leading to better, safer services. A significant theme is staffing – a picture replicated across the NHS. However, rest assured we are doing everything we can to recruit more staff, as well as retaining those already in place. Our staff are, without doubt, our most valuable and precious asset.
And so, as we approach a long bank holiday to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and for many of you, a half term holiday for your children, I want to thank each and every member of our staff who make LSCft what it is. Also, a massive thanks to those who are working and keeping focus on the excellent progress made during Break the Cycle week.
Until next time,
Caroline
