Chair's blog from Trust Board meeting on 4 June
Welcome to my latest Chair’s blog after our June Board meeting.
As a reminder, I write my blog after every Trust Board meeting in public, which means you can hear direct from me about what we talk about at our Board meetings.
I was delighted to welcome to our TALK award winners, Kerry Page, Fleet and Transport Officer, and Dr Lesley Cousins, Consultant Psychiatrist for the West Suffolk Children's Eating Disorders Team, to our Board meeting, chosen as winner and runner up of our TALK Awards from the nominations we received in March. Our thanks and congratulations go to Kerry and Lesley, and to everyone who was nominated for an award.
We also welcomed colleagues from our older adults services at The Julian Hospital, led by Adam Smith, Director of Nursing and Quality, and Gillian Mutizwa, Associate Director of Nursing, Annah Mhlanga-Chirimuta, Florin Buga and Lauren Grey, who spoke about the extraordinary care transformation they have delivered. We also celebrated their recent CQC ‘good’ rating received in March, which the Board are so proud of. The team are delivering person-centred care every day, and it was great to hear about their progress on coordinating activities on the wards.
I was really pleased to welcome our new Non Executive Director (NED) Rob Greig to his first Board meeting. Rob brings a wealth of experience as a senior digital and technology leader to our Board, and will guide us on our digital transformation work, giving service users carers and colleagues far better access to our services
We said farewell to two of our Non Executive Directors. Marie-Claire (MC) Delbrouque, has really championed the voice of service users and carers, and has brought insight to the Board on governance and freedom to speak up. Lindsey Hoy, or Linz as we know her, steps down after six years as an NSFT NED and most recently deputy Chair. I have always been able to rely on Linz as a voice of calm and reason, with a forensic ability to get to the heart of the matter. We shall miss Linz’s expertise in strengthening governance, chairing committees and in audit and finance excellence. Linz brought lived experience to her role and always spoke up for service users and carers with a focus on a culture of openness. It was so good to hear Linz’s personal reflections on her last six years here and the huge progress she has seen at the Trust, particularly with locality working, strengthening partnerships, and transforming our culture. We will miss Linz and MC immensely.
As always, we had a packed agenda, focussing on our refreshed Trust strategy, and our work to improve the culture of our organisation.
I always enjoy presenting my Chairs report to our Board. I highlighted my three priorities as Chair which are: advancing race equity and becoming an anti-racist organisation, putting carers and service users at heart of everything we do, and improving our services through innovation and transformation. We must maintain a laser-like focus on these areas. In my Chair update I also reflected on the hugely positive Nursing Conference in May, and our inspirational celebration event on 2 June for our Routes to Success programme (cohort one) which has developed 18 talented colleagues of colour. Finally, we are working in a changing world, and following the recent elections in May, I am committed to quickly engaging with the new leadership in our two Councils and look forward to reporting progress to future Board meetings. Finally, I noted the sad passing of Hattie Llewelyn-Davies, Chair of Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust. I had the privilege of working with Hattie earlier this year and really valued her warm and engaging approach. As a Board we mark her passing with great sadness.
We heard from our Chief Executive Caroline Donovan who updated us on national and local changes, and new metrics for mental health Trusts, which are working closely with our localities on. It was really heartening to hear how positively NHS England are viewing our progress with strong assurance of our improvement plans. It’s exciting to hear about the progress we are making towards our capital business case bids for neighbourhood centres and two mental health emergency departments. I am particularly pleased we have invested in a partnership with Making Families Count.
The Board approved our refreshed Trust strategy, showing our progress over the last two years and our ambition for the future. This sets out our plans to move towards being an outstanding Trust and reflects national and integrated care board strategic intentions on mental health. We had a helpful discussion and approved our Strategy which will be shared widely now, and accessible for everyone. As a Board, we know there has been engagement in refreshing this strategy, but what matters now is how this strategy is widely understood by our 5,000 colleagues. We will be watching progress closely, paying careful attention to our twelve large scale strategic change programmes, which are how we deliver our strategy. It’s essential we embed these change programmes into all our Trust work as we move towards becoming an outstanding Trust.
Improving the culture and experience for our colleagues is a top priority for the Board. I was so pleased to hear that we will be developing a wellbeing strategic plan for our colleagues, which has enormous potential to make sure we always support and care for everyone who works in NSFT. The Board were assured to hear real progress on better completion of appraisals, progress on embedding a just culture in our employee relations service, and a reduction in staff leaving the Trust within two years. Most importantly, the Board discussed progress being made as we respond to our staff survey results. This included progress on leadership development through our ‘Let’s Talk Culture’ programme.
We heard from the NED chairs of each of our Board Committees. I want to thank our Committees who do so much detailed work on performance, quality and safety. The Board noted we need to continue to work to create capacity for colleagues to maximise clinical engagement in our work. Committee highlights for me included learning that we will be completing a ‘deep dive’ into restrictive interventions and hearing our progress on a reduction in ligature risks, which has been a longstanding Trust problem. I personally welcomed the very thorough discussion on the progress of our Mental Health Legislation Committee.
As always, I want to extend my sincere personal thanks to our colleagues for their continued dedication and professionalism. We know there is still much to do, but the progress we are making shows what is possible when we work together with honesty, kindness and determination.
Along with my blog about our discussions at our Board meeting on 4 June, I’m also sharing a copy of my Chair’s report (page 23) and the report from Caroline Donovan our Chief Executive (page 32). You can read these reports here. They’ll give you more detail about what we’ve been working on over the last couple of months.
Our Board meeting is always live streamed for anyone who wants to watch live or watch later through the recording which is shared online.
Do look out for my next blog following our next Board meeting on 6 August.
Zoë
Zoë Billingham, Chair