Foreword from our Chair and Chief Executive
Kevin Lockyer started in his role as Chair at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust on 1 May 2021 and Sarah Connery was formally appointed Chief Executive in September 2021, after being Acting Chief Executive since October 2020.
Welcome to the annual report and accounts for Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. This report is mainly a reflection of the twelve months ending on 31 March 2023, but we would also like to take the opportunity to outline some of our plans for the future.
This year has been another year of significant development and improvement, alongside some on-going challenges from the pandemic and the increasing demand on our services. What has remained unchanged however has been the commitment of our staff to providing the very best care for patients, service users and their families. The Trust continues to work together with organisations across the Lincolnshire integrated care system to put people at the heart of everything we do.
In this report you will read how the Trust has continued to develop and improve, with a number of new services introduced, namely our mental health urgent assessment centre and the new perinatal trauma and loss service. Many other areas have received additional investment to expand and to meet the increasing needs of our population, including talking therapies and children and young people services, both of which remain key priority areas to improve access and waiting times.
Working together as a health and care system has been a key theme throughout the year, with the official move to Integrated Care Systems in July 2022. We continue to work as an integral part of the Lincolnshire system and lead several key workstreams to improve mental health, dementia, learning disabilities and autism support, as well as the green sustainability agenda.
The Mental Health, Dementia, Learning Disability and Autism Alliance brings together key partners from across the county to work together for the benefit of our local community and to drive change and improvement. Although we are the lead provider for many of these services, we cannot make changes in isolation, and it will be the collective effort of us working together across health, care, local authorities, police and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector which will help us make a real difference.
Whilst many of the Alliance’s workstreams are still in their infancy, we can already see positive ideas and momentum happening. Our shared ambitions are to reduce inequalities, maximise people’s independence, continuously improve the quality and experience of care and ensure people feel valued, included and safe. We look forward to seeing how the workstreams develop and make progress over the coming year.
Another area of joint working which continues to make good progress is our community mental health transformation programme, which is working to improve our mental health and wellbeing offer in the community, working together to deliver the right care, in the right place at the right time. This is much wider than just specialist mental health services and more about enhancing and supporting our communities to support each other with prevention and early intervention, to prevent people getting to a point where they need specialist support in the first place.
The programme has really strengthened our partnerships with primary, secondary and voluntary services and introduced new ways of working through integrated place-based teams, that work in local communities to connect people to relevant help and groups and offer peer support.
The night light cafes continue to be a great success and are expanding across the county. There are now 22 sites, which offer an out-of-hours, non-clinical support service staffed by teams of trained volunteers who are available to listen and to provide a safe place to go in the evening. We continue to receive positive feedback about their impact and are grateful to our communities who are supporting their development.
The new How Are You Lincolnshire (HAY) website launched during the year and is also a great one-stop-shop to find all the groups and activities in Lincolnshire that can support someone with their mental health and wellbeing. Please take the time to have a look at www.haylincolnshire.co.uk
Staff recruitment remains one of our biggest challenges, and we were very disappointed to have had to temporarily close our psychiatric intensive care unit, the Hartsholme Centre, on the grounds of safety, because of staffing concerns. We have been working hard since its closure in October to improve our staffing position across our adult mental health wards and whilst not yet in a position to re-open the Centre, we remain committed to providing this service in the county and have plans in place for a phased re-opening later this year.
International recruitment and growing our own workforce through new roles and apprenticeships remain a key priority and we were pleased to increase our funding for this for the forthcoming year, to help us see a positive impact on our future workforce and provide our staff with opportunities for development.
There have been so many developments over the last year that we cannot fit them into this introduction and do them justice, however, please spend time to review our highlights, from page 15, which really shows just how much we have achieved.
We would like to acknowledge the continued hard work and care demonstrated by our staff, and also thank our governors, who have continued to contribute to, and support both the work of the Trust and the wider system.
We very much look forward to what the next year will bring, with further investment in services, as well as the official opening of our new adult acute mental health wards in Lincoln this June and starting work on the Boston site. But, most of all, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with our staff, our service users and carers, our governors and volunteers, and our partners, to further improve the care we deliver.
Kevin Lockyer
Chair
Sarah Connery
Chief Executive
