Board in Brief

Our new Occupational Health provider Optima, will commence from 1 April. We know from multiple sources that, stress, anxiety and depression remain the leading cause of colleague absence, something that will be the focus over the coming months

Since the last meeting, our Chair, Phil Gayle, along with other members of the board, have been out and about speaking to staff and service users at 39 of our Trust sites, including the Homeless Health Exchange service, Rookery Gardens, Reservoir Court, Tamarind, Reaside and Forward House.

The Community Perinatal service is now meeting its access rate trajectory for the first time since the service launched in 2017. The service is commissioned to see 1,953 women in a 12-month period and December’s data indicates we have exceeded that.

The Deaf service, Dementia and Frailty Inpatient service and Tamarind Centre all received Care Quality Commission (CQC) Mental Health Act (MHA) visits. Positive verbal feedback was received for all. Improvements linked to the CQC action plan for the Zinnia Centre are ongoing, with significant progress made in addressing concerns.

Ten NHS and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) partners have been awarded funding to help with reducing the use of inpatient beds. These initiatives include a dementia pathway for older adults, enhanced provision for bed management and young people’s talking spaces. The collaborative has also launched a tender for the provision of adult inpatient acute and PICU beds.

Over 560 over 16s are now signed up to the Patient Portal which gives service users/patients 24-hour access to their personal mental health and community healthcare information, including appointment dates and care plans.

In response to the launch of the Government’s public consultation, we have submitted views on three key pillars, described as ‘shifts’ in the consultation. These relate to the intent of the 10-year plan to move care from hospitals to communities, make better use of technology and focus on preventing, not just treating, sickness.

Across all divisions we’ve seen big improvements in uptake of clinical supervision and appraisals, including the Secure Care and Offender Health team that has achieved 85% clinical supervision and 90% appraisal uptake rates.

In line with the Community Care Collaborative (CCC) Implementation Plan, examples of integrated neighbourhood teams and locality hubs have been developed. As we prepare for roll out, the ‘operating model’ will be set out for integrated care in Birmingham and Solihull.

Community services have been focused on a plan to address health inequalities across the ‘at risk’ population and people with dementia to improve their overall care and experience and seeking opportunities to work in partnership with the Alzheimer’s society and Age Concern.

At the time Board was held, we had just received details of the annual Planning Guidance which sets out the key priorities that the NHS needs to plan for in the coming year. Once we have digested these and have the guidance in full, teams will need to produce the detailed financial, workforce and activity plans. From there we will be able to understand the level of productivity improvements and financial savings for 2025/26.

Our Trust trajectory is for zero acute inappropriate placements and reduce and not exceed 10 PICU inappropriate placements. While some improvements have been made, there has been a continuing number of service users recently requiring admission. This together with increased Clinically Ready for Discharge patients continues to impair our elimination of inappropriate out of area placements.

Both Adult and Older Adult CMHTs have made progress against their improvement plans which have focused on reducing long waits. Challenges in both services in particular remain around managing high caseload levels and pressures arising from staffing levels.

Sickness levels decreased to 6.3% for December 2024 and remains above the improvement trajectory of 4.7%. Long-term sickness has decreased to 4.0% and short-term sickness has decreased to 2.3%.

The Freedom To Speak Up (FTSU) Guardians and Champions have received 101 concerns in the last quarter. Worker safety and wellbeing was a feature for almost one in every four of our cases, with staffing levels and high workloads remaining a challenge. The Guardians will deliver bespoke training and workshops for leaders and managers at Reaside to improve the speaking up culture.

Our 40-year-old Reaside building will undergo bathroom renovations, once funding is secured. The team is also progressing plans for the Highcroft redevelopment and supporting the 24/7 mental health pilot. A brand-new replacement robot will be installed in Pharmacy and a new food management system will be rolled out.

We continue to look at better utilisation of meeting spaces are not being utilised effectively with staff booking larger rooms than are needed for their meetings. We’ve recently piloted an approach at Northcroft which has resulted in improved utilisation so now we’re looking at how we roll this out across the Trust.