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Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 23 June

June 23, 2023

By Daren Fradgley, Deputy Chief Executive – Richard Beeken is away.

On Wednesday we had a debrief of how we managed last week’s industrial action. When I, along with other execs and senior managers did our walk arounds at City and Sandwell during the 72-hour strike we witnessed staff working together to deliver care to our patients whilst being respectful of the right of colleagues to take industrial action. I was immensely proud to see the commitment of our teams across the Trust working to support each other and our patients whilst under the added pressure of the current weather conditions.

It was great to see strong partnership working with local authority partners as well – support from NHS and Social Care collegues meant we were able to discharge those who no longer needed to be in our care a lot quicker than we would normally.

It’s inevitable, industrial action will be with us for a long while so there is always something we can do to make things even better next time round. The feedback has been generally positive across the board and included:

  • Early decision making helped keep everything on track
  • Presence of IT and pharmacy to support on wards kept things moving
  • Patients seen in a timely manner
  • Clinic cancellations communicated well so no reports of patients arriving for cancelled appointments.

There are still areas to improve on including ensuring:

  • Colleagues understand the role or pathways associated with services such as SDEC to be able to make good use of them
  • Clinical groups have good strong leadership attending tactical to be able to make use of them.

We will take this feedback away and work with the clinical groups to make improvements. If you have any other feedback to share, please speak to your managers. Thank you for pulling together to care for our patients, while supporting colleagues who chose to take industrial action.

While we may not have an influence on national pay negations, we are committed to investing in every one of you through our new People Plan. It is a very detailed commitment about what we will do to give you a great experience as a member of our team here at SWB, including keeping car parking charges free for as long as we can and allowing you the opportunity to develop through the new ARC Leadership programme.

We are also committed to making sure you have adequate and comfortable spaces where you can take a break away from the working environment. Our programme of rest area improvement continues apace with 52 areas identified and works started in 41 of these. We have decorated the rooms, installed items such as new shelving or blinds and also ordered some furniture to enable colleagues to have comfortable places in which to rest.

I know we have been waiting for the provision of water coolers for many months now and I apologise for the time it has taken to resolve this for you all. I have been assured by our estates team that the purchasing process is underway to get water coolers to you as soon as possible. We should be able to share an update with you very soon.

This week we are proud to celebrate and honour the Windrush generation, who arrived in this country 75 years ago only two weeks before the establishment of the NHS. The legacy of this generation can’t be ignored, and the numbers, stories and history tell a clear truth: the Windrush generation has been essential to the function of the NHS.

I leave you with a video from Richard talking about Windrush, and its significance to the NHS and wider society.

Have a good week.