Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 4 February
February 4, 2022
Time to Talk Day took place this week which is a national campaign run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness and is about encouraging people to have conversations with family, friends or colleagues about mental health. If felt appropriate to refer to colleague wellbeing in this week’s message.
Every single one of us has been affected by the events happening over the past two years. The impact of COVID-19 on our organisation has been huge, with us being one of the most affected Trusts in the country, with some of the most deprived communities to support. When I first joined the Trust in February 2021 I was impressed by the range of support on offer to help with people’s wellbeing, including both preventive support, online resources, help with the basics such as food and drink, wellbeing packs, sponsored team activities and psychological support. Throughout the different waves of the pandemic various wellbeing activities have been stepped up and down and the Trust has responded to suggestions and requests in order to ensure that, corporately, we are doing all we can to support our people.
Our Trust has, for some time, had award-winning health and wellbeing services in place and this has been expanded over the past two years. I wanted to make it clear to all of you what our wellbeing offer is as I know this is an area which has created confusion in recent weeks. I know that many of you access resources outside the Trust and I am pleased to learn from many of you how important it is for you to look after your own wellbeing. What we offer at SWB may not meet everyone’s needs all of the time, but we will always aim to access the right support or signpost you appropriately, if you just ask for help.
Dr Masood Aga, who leads our Occupational Health and Wellbeing Service is working on a proposal to invest in our wellbeing provision which aims to provide a personalised occupational health and wellbeing offer for our people with an integrated and coordinated approach, ensure that everyone feels supported, safe and secure at work. More details on that provision will follow.
A range of wellbeing services are currently on offer.
1.Occupational health and wellbeing
This is here to support any colleague with mental and physical health needs. You can have individual consultations with clinicians and access advice, onward referrals or be provided with support that our own Trust provides such as physiotherapy. Free access to counselling is available for all colleagues. You can access this through occupational health in a totally confidential mannner. Occupational health will also support return to work assessments and help you with options to get you back to work safely if you have been away through ill health.
2. Psychological support
As well as the free counselling service you can also access coaching conversations, mediation, stress and mental wellbeing risk assessments, help from trained mental health first aiders and REACT practitioners and the Thrive app. And, of course, you can find other mental health support through your own GP, or from any of the national services that are available. These are all linked on our intranet’s wellbeing pages.
3. Food available 24/7
Many of you have asked if you can have access to hot food round the clock at our sites and frankly, you shouldn’t have to ask. We need to provide better food options than we currently do. We were fortunate during the first COVID-19 wave that many local businesses donated food and drinks for us that we sold through the pop-up shop, distributed across all services or kept in freezers for night staff. Our catering services have remained open for staff and will continue to provide a range of food options at subsidised rates for you. We have also just arranged for some new smart fridges to be installed on a trial basis from Meals for the NHS. Good quality meals, drinks and snacks can be provided from the fridges 24/7 They are due to arrive soon on a trial basis so do let us know what you think of them. We are also looking to invest in vastly improved drinking water availability to ensure there is easy access for all.
4. Upgrades to staff rest areas
We know that having good places at work to take a break is really important and across a lot of our estate we fall well short. We are therefore happy to receive requests for new furniture or equipment to improve rest areas and also requests for minor works such as painting and shelving. If your rest room needs a freshen up please completed the Staff Rest Room Refresh Request Form and email it to Dinah McLannahan, Chief Finance Officer – Dinah.mclannahan@nhs.net. Dinah will then get in touch to progress your requests.
5. Wellbeing services
The wellbeing team run a number of services to support colleagues including the Sanctuary (former Learning Works) and wellbeing hubs at City, Sandwell and Rowley. These facilities are available for every staff member. You can book treatments, access massage chairs, join a guided meditation or simply arrange to drop in for a coffee and a chat. Hundreds of staff may regular use of these facilities and have talked about the benefits to them personally. Why not try this out?
6. Supported team time-outs
We have made specific funding available for teams to hold their own recovery times together. Most teams have already benefited from this. The final date to access Trust funds for team time-out is 31 March 2022. Of course, many teams will continue to hold team time-outs and development sessions during the course of the normal year and this is for teams to arrange, organise and fund as you have done pre-pandemic. I know that managers and leaders will continue to develop and support plans for local teams to be together, learn together and support each other. The weekly wellbeing hour that we had in place in 2021 no longer forms part of our Trust guidance (meaning that we no longer expect everyone to do this). Some teams greatly benefited from this and have arranged, among themselves, to continue. For other teams, the logistics were challenging which is why it is no longer a universal expectation.
7. Annual leave
Additional days of annual leave has been raised as a reward that some people have requested. We have considered this, but have decided that this isn’t the right thing for all staff. So many of you struggle to take your annual leave. Over the last two years we have made arrangements to pay people for outstanding annual leave where people have clearly been unable to take it. It does not seem fair to provide such a perk that not all staff would benefit from. We want to ensure that firstly everyone does take their annual leave entitlement to ensure adequate rest and, where that isn’t possible, we will be launching another buy back scheme, very similar to that run last year. As long as colleagues take their statutory entitlement of 28 days, you will be able to sell back additional leave you are not able to take, or carry some into next year, or both. We will share details of the scheme shortly. As a day of annual leave costs around £1m we wanted to ensure we invested a similar sum in our wellbeing activities. (Don’t forget there is an additional bank holiday in 2022…)
Other requests for group specific support (eg new bags for community nursing, new scrubs) are being progressed and Dinah is happy to consider any other specific requests.
Access to wellbeing services both within and outside the Trust continue to be promoted in our staff communications channels and you can find all the information here. For ease, there are also key contacts so you can access the right help quickly.
My main message is for us all to make the time for our own health and wellbeing needs, and access support via the Trust or elsewhere as needed. For many that starts with creating the time to talk, and perhaps being the people to take the time to listen. Let’s make that a commitment to ourselves and each other over the next week.