Our unique Ask the Board Online facility allows anyone to make a comment or ask a question to the board using this form.
A response is provided as part of the Chair’s Report to the board meeting, which is publicly available as a video shortly after the meeting.
The archive of previously asked questions and our responses is provided below.
How to search the archive
You can search all responses using the below field and clicking the Filter archive button. This will search the name, date, comment/suggestion/question, and our response fields.
If you have any questions about Ask the Board Online, contact the Communications Team at communications@combined.nhs.uk
Name:
Maureen Roberts
Date:
August 11, 2020 at 9:23 pm
Comment / Suggestion / Question:
I would like to ask about the future of Knivedon
Our response:
Our full response on the future of Kniveden is available at https://www.combined.nhs.uk/future-of-the-kniveden-project/
Name:
Amjid Wazir
Date:
July 7, 2020 at 4:37 pm
Comment / Suggestion / Question:
What action have you taken to support BAME members of staff and service users during the Covid period and what do you plan to do over the future period to continue that support?
Our response:
As a priority Trust managers have undertaken a risk assessment on our BAME staff and have achieved a 100% compliance rate for all our BAME clinical staff. Following the risk assessments staff has been offered a Health Screening MOT by our Occupational Health provider.
The Trust has also offered the following support as part of our ongoing health and wellbeing commitment to our BAME staff:
• Supplying information and advice about taking Vitamin D supplements
• Counselling support (including opportunity to request BAME counsellor)
• Access to debrief and Critical Incident Stress Management approaches following incidents
• New rest room facilities (including access to vegetarian and culturally-appropriate microwave meals)
• Strengthening infection, prevention and control by supplying access to disposal prayer mats and disposal religious /cultural headwear during COVID-19
• Reviewing racial incidents by patients and service users with our BAME staff to improve our response and prevention strategies.
• Regular wellbeing packages delivered to our front-of-house teams, including Eid wellbeing packages to our teams
• Highly supportive approach to Ramadan 2020 and other religious observance through COVID-19
• Online BAME Staff Network meetings in which we share details of numerous support sessions nationally with our workforce.
• Our BAME staff have received direct communications from our CEO; our Director of Workforce and BAME Network Lead, and our Diversity & Inclusion Lead and we have regular updates on BAME Inclusion in our Trust staff newsletter.
• Our BAME Education Practise Facilitator and our BAME Inclusion Facilitator / have been supporting the embedding of inclusion through our clinical teams.
The Trust recognises that in addressing the workforce inequalities that this will impact positively on addressing the health inequalities in our population. Summarised below is an overview of the measures we have in place to support the service user experience.
• The Trust has a Service User and Carer Council which is a group made up of representatives of the Trust Board, staff, service users, carers and parents. They review developments across the Trust providing feedback from themselves and the people they represent. Their aim is to ensure that the group’s perspectives are taken into account when the Trust plans and delivers services. It also looks to ensure that feedback is sought following service changes to ensure they are improving the quality of care and meeting service users’ needs.
• We undertake Equality Impact Assessments on any new services that are designed and delivered to ensure that there is no impact on the population that we serve.
• We provide an Interpretation & Translation Service to ensure our patients receive the support and information they need to access services, communicate with healthcare staff and to make informed decisions about their care and treatment.
• As part of the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) the Trust aims to make sure that people with a disability or sensory impairment, who are our patients, service users and their carers, have access to information that they can understand and any communication support they need to help them with their care journey.
Our focus on supporting our BAME staff moving forwards is to ensure that we continue to evolve our health and wellbeing support to meet their needs throughout these changing times. It is also recognised that in addition to supporting the health and wellbeing of our staff that there are the wider issues around the societal cultural transformation. To that end the Trust will be developing a programme for its leadership to ensure that our leaders understand and can fluently talk about race and ethnicity. This will enable the cultural transformation that is needed to be embedded both within the organisation and our population as part of our responsibility in addressing the health inequalities to improve the access and quality of care provided to our service users.
Name:
Ian Syme
Date:
July 2, 2020 at 1:27 pm
Comment / Suggestion / Question:
The covid19 pandemic has certainly exposed fractures and challenges in Care Delivery nationally and locally (and of course internationally). A recent article in the HSJ highlighted that NHSE and NHSI have now ordered urgent reviews into deaths of people with Learning Disabilities (LD) and Autism. The CQC had published data in June 2020 which suggests death rates amongst those with LD and/Autism has DOUBLED during the pandemic. NHSE/I has previously refused to publish data from the LeDer programme or its data on LD deaths. Would Combined Healthcare care to comment on the above and is the Trust actively involved in providing data and information to both PHE and NHSE/I review on what certainly appears a significant flaw in Care Delivery to an extremely vulnerable patient cohort?
Thank You
Ian Syme
Our response:
The quarterly mortality review paper and annual paper to Board (the annual paper is on the Board agenda) provides data on a regular basis to Board. Combined was proactive in reviewing deaths in LD and Autism whilst the LeDeR review process was being set up nationally so we could identify any learning and put actions in place should need arise. We are passionate at Combined about learning from incidents when they occur.
Name:
Ian Syme
Date:
May 12, 2020 at 10:47 am
Comment / Suggestion / Question:
NHS and Care Sector employees Well being
The unprecedented pressures NHS and Care Employees are having to cope with now and certainly in the foreseeable future to address all aspects of Covid19 and also having to adapt to very different social interaction do have consequences for individuals. It’s very likely that prior capacity to address Care sector and NHS employee stress and anxiety will be unable to cope with significant increase in demand.
a. How is Combined Healthcare going to ensure that employee stress and anxiety, the Mental Health of its employees, will be swiftly identified individually and swiftly acted upon? The announced national initiative of a telephone ‘Help Line’ certainly won’t suffice!
b. Combined Healthcare will be facing considerable increases in demand for its services from those employed within the NHS perse and the greater Care sector. Has Combined any ‘projections’ or mapping information that gives an indication of the magnitude of such service demand increases? If so would the Trust give a “flavour” of the expected increase in demand for its services
Our response:
As a Trust we have been very quick to act, immediately extending our internal offer of support and continually expanding and developing this to meet the changing needs of our staff as we progress through the 3 psychological response phases of the pandemic (Preparation, Active, Recovery) outlined in guidance by the British Psychological Society.
We aligned and dovetailed our extended and enhanced internal offer of support to the national NHS offer once this was launched. The national NHS offer of support includes a helpline, a bereavement line, a 24/7 text service, virtual group support and debrief sessions facilitated by psychologists, plus a range of e-learning mental health and psychological support resources.
In addition to ensuring a broad scope of comprehensive support for our own people working at Combined, we are also leading a Staffordshire system-wide group focussed specifically on the psychological health and wellbeing of staff during and post Covid-19. This group meets weekly to share information between all 3 NHS providers and the CCG, ensuring a consistent, responsive, high quality system-wide offer of support is provided to our people in Staffordshire.
There is no reliable data as yet on which to base predictions for the demand of services in the Recovery phase, however, by providing proactive high quality support to our people now, we are aiming to reduce and minimise the longer-term impact on our staff, thereby reducing the potential need for our staff to receive therapeutic intervention. However, we recognise that some staff will require this level of support and we are working to identify individuals who may require this intervention and signpost them to appropriate sources of support.
Name:
Andrew Budworth
Date:
July 2, 2020 at 1:16 pm
Comment / Suggestion / Question:
What events, activities and promotions did Combined Healthcare carry out for Stoke-on-Trent Pride this year and what are you doing to ensure that the rights and profile of your LGBT staff and service users are protected and promoted all year round, not simply during the annual Pride period?
Our response:
At Combined this year, I am delighted that we have still been able to celebrate and raise awareness about Pride, despite the pandemic.
It is important to us to show our support for all our colleagues and service users and their families who are LGBT+. We are proud to have held our own socially-distanced Pride ‘flag wave of honour’ at Harplands Hospital, led by one of our student nurses,” said Shajeda Ahmed, Director of Workforce, OD and Inclusion. “We have sent out some Pride-themed goodies to our teams, including our ‘Proud to be LGBT’ inclusive stickers and Trans flag stickers which have been displayed across team and services. Thank you to Andrew Budworth of Stoke Pride for donating many of the Pride goodies.
We fully recognise the importance of Pride, but as the question alludes to, the rights of our colleagues and people from the LGBT+ community need to be protected and promoted all year round. This is absolutely our stance at Combined and we have worked hard and continue to do so, to develop and strengthen our inclusive culture.
We created our Inclusion Council to accelerate the development of a more inclusive culture. Supporting this Council, are a number of staff networks who represent, provide voice to and support groups of people from under-represented groups, which includes our LGBT+ staff network.
The Council is chaired by Peter Axon, Combined CEO with our Executive Lead for Diversity & Inclusion, Shajeda Ahmed, Director of Workforce, OD and Inclusion and includes executive Board and staff side representation, helping to advise, influence and direct activity to help us improve the rights and inclusivity of staff, service users and members of the public from the LGBT+ community.
On the 14 February 2020 we ran our Annual LGBT+ Inclusion Conference. This was opened by our CEO, Peter Axon and co-facilitated by Jonathan O’Brien, our Director of Operations and Deputy CEO with Jenny Harvey, our Staff Side Chair, both of whom are proud members of the LGBT+ community. High profile national guest speakers shone the spotlight on a range of LGBT+ topics which were supplemented by participant workshops.
The event was open to anyone that wanted to attend and not limited to staff working at Combined. We had colleagues from 3rd sector organisations, social care, other NHS providers and members of the public, as well as our own staff, some of whom are from the LGBT+ community or allies, wanting to learn more to support their colleagues, service users or loved ones and families members from the LGBT+ community. Our people are at the heart of everything we do and our ethos is to continue building, developing and embedding our culture of inclusion at Combined.
