Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 8 May
May 8, 2020
Today is, of course, a day of commemoration and a chance to reflect on the sacrifices made by older residents, friends and neighbours. Some of those who served now live in residential or nursing home care locally, and I am sure that all of us will share a concern from national news about the risks posed in small communal environments to vulnerable adults. The Trust has been working closely with the Care Home sector from the start of the Pandemic, providing advice and Personal Protective Equipment, and we have just made our wider employee Wellbeing Offer available too. We are working with the local authorities to see what we can do to widen that help further to the home-care sector, often very lowly paid people providing incredible support travelling from home to home. We would hope, after the Pandemic phase is passed, that there will be chance to reflect on the care sector as whole. Promised Green Papers have come and gone, paused and deferred. Out of the tragedy, perhaps, may come the impetus to settle funding models for long term care and move away from a low-wage, poor paid culture with a week’s care priced at £550. We continue to explore the role the Trust might play in such a renaissance – both in supporting the local authority’s expansion of their provision and in launching our own.
Life in the NHS now seems to come with regular celebrations or moments marking public support. I was saddened last night to read of some staff feeling blocked from joining in with #clapforcarers and I want to make it clear that any of us may wish to do that, even at work, and if workload allows that sounds like a good time to take your break. That written it is worth emphasising our social media policy. Videos posted on TikTok or other platforms must be appropriate and it is very rare in the work context that that can be achieved with due privacy. If you are contacted by media outlets then the communications department will help you. None of this paragraph should be read to any way seek to dissuade speaking up or honesty about difficulties that we face. This week I have spoken with individuals about PPE and still more on risk assessment requested for Black and Minority Ethnic colleagues. It helps to keep us all safe if people highlight the gaps between what we say is happening and their experience. Our Freedom to Speak up Guardians are a resource to consider, alongside trade unions, incident forms, line managers, or our independent anonymised helpline. Quite often of course concerns stem from mutual misunderstanding and you know that our Pandemic HR support line on 3116 is available to try and make sure we apply all our approach and policies fairly and consistently.
International Nurses’ Day is coming up on Tuesday, and Tuesday gone we celebrated both International Midwives’ and the 10th anniversary of our Serenity Midwife led birth centre. The Trust has one of the largest such units in the region and a commitment to supporting safe choice at birth. One of my strongest memories from 2019 was watching our community midwives present their strategy for the future to the Trust’s Board, and Covid-19 has forced change at pace. So both Villa Park and the Hawthorns are now hosting services for local families. I have no idea when football might resume, but we will work with new partners to develop that idea of venues that work for our teams but also encourage or enthuse the people that we are caring for. Our Star of the Week this week, Miriam Pappworth, played an immense role in reorganising services in March and April to meet the challenge of community maternity services, as GP practice arrangements changed rapidly. Community based work must have at its core that agility to respond to neighbourhood change and circumstance. That is one of the key advantages of such small-scale service models, and we have some terrific examples of that person-shaped work across the Trust. Yesterday’s Trust Board, another WebEx extravaganza, saw us discuss how we might take the learning from our adult iCares services, and consider the best wrap around services we might begin to provide for children and young people at the Trust.
Learning is becoming the common thread in my Friday messages this year. On Wednesday coming we have our latest Quality Improvement Half Day. This one is very much a chance to formalise your views on what has worked well during Covid-19 and what we want to keep for the future. That restoration work is the focus of attention across the NHS right now. Of course, we are still sometimes waylaid by supply issues, the latest around laboratory re-agents, so the pace of change will follow from the surge, changes to the lockdown, and our ability to safely gear up. Birmingham’s Treatment Centre is ready to re-start in its new guise and this weekend the Big Clean Up continues at Rowley Regis, which we also see as a key hub for non-Covid (or Covid unlikely) care.
Learning too is at the heart of Thursday’s 14.30pm WebEx about Working from Home. Whatever the Prime Minister does or does not announce on Sunday, we will be keeping through May our strong support for home based working where we can. The point of the WebEx and this week’s survey is to understand what makes WFH tolerable or indeed highly productive, and how we work to enable that. Thursday is also our launch day for the Recharge Booth. Similar to a Schwartz round but virtually based. Claire Hubbard and Richard Burnell will be supporting this weekly programme which gives you chance to talk and share, or listen, to someone’s story. Story telling is bound to be a huge part of the recovery process in our organisation. Whatever data does or does not tell us about own situation or international comparisons each of us has a lived experience that we will carry forward from these past few weeks. Those beliefs will shape our views of one another, of other organisations, and of the future, and so we are determined to create the broadest possible scope for people to share and consider those experiences. Thank you again to those who have stepped forward as mental health first aiders and if you have yet to hear from us you will over the coming few days. Training kicks off shortly, and all accredited managers will have a part to play in thinking about the psychological needs of those in our organisation in the months and years ahead.
Remember in the meantime, that there is a huge volume of resources available to you to support mental wellbeing – both yours and those at home with you. So please find a moment to consider what you need to do to help yourself and support yourself at this difficult time.