Better Together e-news Winter 2015
We'd like to wish all our members a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
This December we've put together a special festive e-newsletter edition of your regular magazine, to keep you up-to-date with all the Trust news and developments that have taken place over the past few months.
In this issue you'll find a Christmas message from the Chair Paul Devlin, an update on our recent comprehensive Care Quality Commission inspection, and much more.
The newsletter will be winging its way into your inboxes soon.
Click on each of the items below to expand the news story.
Christmas cheer from the Chair
Dear Member,
As we draw towards the close of 2015, and many of us are already getting into the Christmas spirit, I have been reflecting on the Trust I joined seven months ago.
You will probably be aware that we have just had a comprehensive inspection from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We had over 70 inspectors in Lincolnshire for a whole week, visiting most of our services and talking with and listening to patients, staff, Governors, Board members, and other local organisations. All these perspectives were important to give the CQC as full a picture of how well we do what we do, and some were reflected in a short film we presented to the inspectors on day one.
The visit gave us an opportunity to really focus on the services we provide, and the ways in which we provide them, and my Board colleagues and I were so proud of the hard work and dedication that the CQC saw.
We will not know the outcome of the visit until well into the New Year, but in the meantime I want thank everyone who helped make the visit go so well, and to thank everyone who took the time to speak with the inspection team and share their experience of us.
During the year there have been some important events at LPFT – some of which are mentioned elsewhere in Better Together. I would like to highlight three in particular:
- In July, the young people’s group, Lost Luggage, led and facilitated a half-day conference on tackling stigma in mental health from a young people’s perspective. The combination of workshop sessions and stalls helped many members of the public gain a better understanding of the stigma young people can face, but also how to help reduce that stigma. The young people were an inspiration and their courage in sharing their own experiences was very life-affirming.
- In September, we held our Annual Public Meeting where we were able to showcase some of our services such as our Eating Disorder service. A highlight was the “market place” of stalls from groups involved in the Managed Care Network, showing the wide range of community support and activity Lincolnshire has to support mental health and wellbeing. I was particularly delighted to be able to present a number of our volunteers with Long Service Awards, as a way of thanking them for their contribution to our patients.
- In October, we celebrated World Mental Health Day with a lively community event in Lincoln. As part of this, we celebrated reaching our 10,000th member of the Trust, and congratulated our friends in the SHINE network on reaching their 1,000th member. The photo competition that was part of the day showed some really creative ways in which we can all look after our mental health.
Ensuring our services are available to everyone is critical for LPFT. One way in which we work on this is to focus on equality and diversity – for our patients, and for our staff. I know that having a diverse workforce that reflects our communities, and staff who know they can be their full selves at work, improves the quality of our services to patients. We are now a recognised NHS Employers’ Equality and Diversity Partner, and our Board signed up to the Diversity in the Boardroom pledge. I am proud of our equality “visible leaders” who help challenge and improve this important aspect of our work.
During the year our services and staff have been recognised through a range of regional and national awards (you can read more in the rest of the newsletter), and I am always pleased to see this recognition and congratulate all who have been nominated or received awards. Of course, most of the work done by staff and volunteers does not get such recognition, and I thank all our staff and volunteers for their commitment to doing the very best for patients.
Finally, whether you celebrate it or not, can I wish you a peaceful Christmas, and a healthy, happy New Year, when it comes?
CQC comprehensive inspection
We welcomed between 70 to 80 Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors into the Trust earlier this month, who carried out their comprehensive inspection of the services we provide.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. They make sure services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high quality care and encourage services to improve.
As part of their role they monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure fundamental standards of care are being met. They then publish what they find, including performance ratings to help people choose their care.
We hosted the inspectors during the first week of December, who visited numerous Trust sites and spoke to staff and service users across the organisation.
Alongside this, a number of focus groups were held allowing service users, their families and carers, as well as staff, give their views directly to the CQC.
We won't find out the results until the spring but we would like to thank staff for their hard work and all our patients, service users, Governors, members and carers for their participation in the visit.
LPFT Chief Executive, Dr John Brewin said:
I am really pleased that inspectors said that overall they found teams to be very welcoming and helpful, which enabled the inspection to run very smoothly. They were complimentary about staff, saying they were caring and compassionate, with a clear patient focus. We would like to thank all of you for your dedication and commitment, not just during inspection week, but for the preparatory work that went into the inspection, and also of course our staff, for continually putting our patients at the heart of everything we do.
Transforming learning disabilities care
The Trust, with our commissioners, South West Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group, is currently reviewing the services we offer for people with learning disabilities and autism.
As part of a national programme of Transforming Care in learning disability services, we are working with service users, their carers and families to understand what they would like to see improved and how the principles in the national guidance could be introduced locally.
To help us with this important piece of work we have been inviting people with learning disabilities who have used our services, their family and carers, to feedback events where they can have their say and input into future plans.
These events play a vital role in helping us shape the future of our services and we welcome the views of as many service users and their families as possible.
There are feedback events throughout December and January 2016.
Research and discover
Over the past few months our busy research team have been involved in a ground-breaking new study offering a bespoke 'stop smoking' service to those experiencing schizophenia and bipolar disorder, who want to cut down smoking or give up for good.
The SCIMITAR+ study is currently evaluating a new smoking cessation service which is specifically tailored to meet the needs of individual patients with severe mental illness.
The study works by randomly allocating participants into two groups. One receives the new SCIMITAR service and the other will receive the usual treatment supplied to those who want to quit smoking - results are then compared.
Referrals can only be received from health or social care staff from community, inpatient rehab or inpatient forensic settings. Patients must be aged 18 and over with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, psychosis or bipolar disorder who want to cut down or kick their smoking habit.
LPFT was one of the first sites to open for recruitment in September this year and is currently leading recruitment along with Kent and Medway NHS Trust.
The Trust has received 10 referrals from LPFT staff with nine people randomised to the study so far. The aim is to recruit 50 people by September next year.
Research Nurse, Diane Brennan, said the Trust will be extending recruitment to the study in GP surgeries in the New Year.
We are really excited to be part of this ground-breaking study, particularly as is focusses on an important public health issue for our patients.
Professor Simon Gilbody, from the University of York, who is heading up the SCIMITAR research said he was pleased with the progress made so far this year.
We are absolutely delighted to be where we are at the close of 2015. This is a really important piece of research which has the potential to inform practice and policy for the better.
In addition to the smoking cessation study, the Trust's research team have also been assisting a joint study being run by Lancaster and Liverpool universities and University College London.
This study involves testing the effectiveness of the REACT (Relatives Education and Coping Toolkit), online peer-supported toolkit for reducing distress for relatives of those with psychosis or bipolar disorder.
The research also explores the costs involved with delivering the toolkit and participants must be aged 16 or over and have access to the Internet. See the link opposite.
If you are interested in taking part in either of these studies, would like more information or would like to refer someone to the SCIMITAR+ trial, please contact Diane Brennan on 07789 945084, Lizwi Nyathi on 07775 552811 or Dr Jha (Principal Investigator) on 01205 446634.
Voices speak out for change
A group of 11 service users from Boston steps2change talking therapies have joined forces to help shape and improve the service.
They first met in April this year and have dubbed the group voice2change, holding monthly patient involvement meetings.
voice2change is not a support or self-help group but a forum where comments, constructive criticisms and new ideas about the steps2change service can be heard.
Chris Morgan, an LPFT Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner, who runs the group said:
People who have been helped by steps2change often want to contribute back and this group is a perfect opportunity to do so. We plan to run events to make the local community more aware of the help and support available. Next year voice2change will be also looking at improvements to the steps2change website to make it more engaging and accessible.
voice2change usually meet on the second Wednesday of the month, from 6pm to 8pm at the Boston Archway Centre.
At the end of treatment from steps2change Boston, service users can opt in to become members of the group.
If you’ve been receiving therapy from the Boston team and would like to be involved please contact Boston steps2change by emailing Lpn-tr.
Trust move to smoke free premises
We want to become a smoke free organisation next year. Currently smoking is permitted within designated areas but from 28th June 2016 staff, patients and visitors will no longer be able to smoke tobacco products on any of our premises.
Smoking among mental health inpatients is around three times higher than in the general adult population. This can lead to significant physical health problems and drastically reduces life expectancy.
We want to do all we can to tackle the smoking culture in mental health care and support our patients and staff to enjoy the best possible health. The benefits of not smoking go much further than improved physical health. We know that many patients spend a significant proportion of their income on tobacco products. Our inpatient nurses also devote a lot of time to escorting patients to designated smoking areas and we’d like this time to be spent on therapeutic activities.
Ian Jerams, LPFT Director of Operations said:
We recognise that preventing smoking on our premises will be a challenge. However, smokers admitted to our inpatient units will be offered nicotine replacement therapy and support to either temporarily abstain from smoking or to quit completely.
The Trust is also involved in a research project which is looking at how people with mental health problems can be better served by smoking cessation services in community settings. We hope to use the intelligence from this research to help our patients who want to stop smoking.
Lincolnshire Health and Care - summit meeting
Medical experts and leaders of the health and care system from around the county have met to further define proposals which will improve health and care services for patients in Lincolnshire.
More than 75 professionals gathered in Sleaford to discuss improvements to women and children’s services and emergency services at the county’s hospitals.
All the county’s major commissioner groups and providers were represented at the summit, organised by the Lincolnshire Health and Care (LHAC) programme, including all four of the county’s Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust, Lincolnshire County Council, Lincolnshire Local Medical Committee, Healthwatch Lincolnshire and East Midlands Ambulance Services NHS Trust.
The purpose of the LHAC programme is to bring the county's health and social care organisations together to design a new model for services in Lincolnshire which will enable people to access the right services at the right time, now and in the future.
The gathered experts debated the best way to provide sustainable, modern, safe and good quality maternity and paediatric services across the county’s two major hospitals in Lincoln and Boston and the suite of services to support women and children that could be available in the community and closer to home.
The new chief executive of ULHT, Jan Sobieraj, attended the workshop on only his third day in the job.
They also discussed how a network of urgent care centres across the county could be used to support, and take pressure off, existing A and E departments and treat patients quicker.
The day has moved LHAC forward in agreeing a set of possible options which the public will be asked to give a view on.
The next step is to consider, early next year, proposals for planned care and the detail around how proactive care will work in the community to support care closer to home and how we need to develop mental health, learning disability and autism services across the county.
Bringing all this detailed design work together will provide a set of options which commissioners and providers can agree before asking the public for their views.
Allan Kitt, Chief Officer of South West Lincolnshire CCG and Lead Chief Officer for LHAC, said:
Everyone in the room was clear about the need for services to change dramatically to meet the needs of our changing population. It is very clear that there is real enthusiasm amongst clinical leaders in all organisations to develop services for the people of Lincolnshire that are amongst the best. It was fantastic to see such a motivated group of people from across the entire health and care sectors all moving in a common direction and all focused on how we can do the best possible for all the people of Lincolnshire.
Children's services redesign
Following a full review of our Child and Adolescent Mental Health services (CAMHS), which included engagement with 55 stakeholder groups, we have worked with CAMHS commissioners to develop a new model of delivery, which requires an additional £1.4 million funding to put in place.
The remodelled service will operate according to children and young people’s IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) principles and include the following key elements:
- A Single Point of Access (SPA)
- Pre CAMHS support, including primary care and education
- An integrated community CAMHS provision, delivering evidenced-based pathways and focussed on outcomes; this will be known as Core CAMHS.
- Access to crisis intervention and home treatment 24 hours a day, seven days-a-week, known as Tier 3+
- A community-based eating disorders service
- Support to vulnerable groups
- Care and support through transition to other services
We're delighted to announce that the funding has now been confirmed, with the new look service to commence from April 2016. Project work to implement the new model has already begun and more details will follow in due course.
Sharon King, the Trust's Deputy Director of Operations said:
This is excellent news and a testament to the great work carried out by our CAMHS teams every single day.
Awards and recognition
It's been another successful few months for LPFT with awards and nominations aplenty.
In October the Trust's Dr Sami Timimi and Dianne Tetley clinched an award at the Medipex NHS Innovation Awards and Showcase 2015 for their pioneering work on the MyOutcomes®UK management system.
The team developed the system in collaboration with Canadian-based Health Factors and it was named as a joint winner in the Mental Health and Wellbeing category.
MyOutcomes®UK maps therapeutic outcomes and the relationship between practitioners and patients.
It interprets scores automatically and charts progress graphically so that health professionals can provide verbal and visual ‘real-time’, session-by-session feedback to individual patients and/or their carers, about their progress.
Meanwhile, two pieces of ground-breaking LPFT work were 'highly commended' in the Care Coordination Association (CCA) Good Practice Awards, also held in October.
A project to aid healthcare staff with clinical risk assessments of their patients, and an article on clinical audits in the CCA's own journal The Approach scooped the honours for the Trust.
Elsewhere, Charlesworth and Conolly wards, LPFT's two acute mental health wards based at the Peter Hodgkinson Centre (PHC), in Lincoln, received their AIMS reaccreditation from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) for a further three years.
AIMS, which stands for Accreditation for Inpatient Mental Health Services, is the RCP's standards-based accreditation programme, which assesses the quality of care on mental health wards across the UK.
The result for PHC means that both wards have evidenced that they are continually providing the best care possible for patients who are admitted to an inpatient unit.
Congratulations must also go to our North East Lincolnshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) team, who represented the Trust at two separate awards ceremonies in November. They were shortlisted in the Royal College of Psychiatrists Awards 2015, Children and Adolescents Psychiatric Team of the Year category and just two days later attended the glittering Nursing Times Awards 2015, where they were shortlisted in the CAMHS section for their entry 'Innovative CAMHS Redesign Structure'.
Although not ultimately successful in either category, it is still a magnificent achievement for the service to be recognised in such a way.
Similar congratulations go to Trust staff Zoë Rowe and Mark Kowalski, who were both shortlisted in December's East Midland's heat of this year's NHS Recognition Awards.
Zoë, the Trust’s Interim Director of Nursing and Quality was shortlisted in the Leader of Inclusivity of the Year category, with Mark recognised in the Mentor/Coach of the Year section.
Although unsuccessful on the night, we're still very proud of their achievements.
We sincerely hope that next year will be as exciting as this one has been for staff and team recognition across the Trust.
Winter can be a challenging time to stay safe and well. We've got some helpful advice and top tips on how to keep healthy over the Christmas period and avoid slips, trips and falls.
Over the summer we held a number of focus groups with patients and carers as part of developing our clinical priorities for the future.
A number of elections to our Council of Governors have taken place over the past few months and we've welcomed new Public and Stakeholder Governors to the Trust. A by-election will also take place soon for our vacant Public Governor seat in Boston.
Farewell to members of the Board
We bid fond farewells to the Trust's Director of Nursing and Quality, Michelle Persaud and Non-Executive Director George Krawiec earlier this year. Michelle, learning disabilities nurse by trade, retired in November after 36 years' dedicated service. George came to the end of his second full term of office last summer.
