The importance of a human touch

The last couple of weeks have had some sad moments, as my elderly neighbour lost his wife after a short but unexpected illness.

He is in his late eighties and loves painting in his spare time, so we have been saving episodes of Portrait Artist of the Year for him to watch with us over a bite to eat. We know he’s desperately missing his wife, so it’s our small way of providing some friendship and support.

We all know that older people are especially vulnerable to social isolation and it can have a serious effect on health. Loneliness doesn’t just feel sad; it is bad for you too.

If like me you have elderly parents, then I’m sure you worry about them too. Mine now live in Hampshire, far away from other family members, and totally rely on each other, so I do worry about what will happen if one of them is left on their own.

I visited my parents for Mother’s Day, and my mum had just been for an appointment at a dementia assessment clinic as her memory has gradually been getting worse. At this stage, they don't appear too worried and although her short term memory is a bit dodgy, they didn't think there was much wrong with her cognitive functioning. However, the same day they reached that conclusion, she sent a birthday card to my son, signed upside down and with a cheque with my brother’s name on it (they are both Chris but with different surnames!). We all saw the funny side of it, because worrying about it won’t help anyone at this point.

My mum has a very down to earth approach to growing old. She’s originally from Blackburn and has a lot of northern pragmatism, so from her perspective she's happy she has had her 'three score and ten' and isn't at all worried about 'popping her clogs' as she says!

Many people are living a lot longer than 70 these days though. The NHS is a victim of its own success in a way, as this Silver Age achievement risks a ‘demographic timebomb’ with an older and sicker population. But, how a society treats its most vulnerable – whether its children, the disabled or the elderly – is always the measure of its humanity.

And I saw heart-warming humanity in abundance when I visited The Meadows in Stockport last week, which provides a wide range of mental health and specialist care services for older people, including inpatients, a dementia day care service and community outreach services. It was good to see it from a personal perspective as well, and I was so impressed with the fantastic leadership and team work.

I had a tour of the unit and met with service managers and staff from different parts of The Meadows, including  Davenport, Saffron and Rosewood wards, as well as a range of community services including the community mental health, discharge planning, home intervention, liaison service and short-term support teams.

They are a brilliant example of true integration delivering the best possible care and support for people.   The teams are co-located, with genuine collaboration across different services. This hasn’t happened overnight, but has been built up over a long time with passion and commitment. It was clear the staff in the unit go the extra mile for their patients, day in and day out, because they care so much. It was a humbling and inspiring thing to see.

It’s always interesting to hear about people’s concerns first-hand, and The Meadows teams are worried about a couple of big issues, including potential changes to the way the local authority organises their social services, and what our aspiration to tackle mixed sex accommodation might mean for their patients and staff.

They appear to have a great model of integration and collaboration, and it made me think about Walter Leutz’s ‘five truths about integration’.  His five truths, from studying the process in the US and UK, are you can’t integrate all of the services for all of the people; your integration is my fragmentation; integration costs before it pays; you can't integrate a square peg into a round hole; and the one who integrates calls the tune.

We have to be careful that we don't bring about fragmentation of a successful model at The Meadows, just so we can fix a problem elsewhere.

Over the next few weeks I am going to be prioritising visits to corporate service teams. I know some of you will be thinking, ‘but that’s where she’s based, so surely she sees them all the time’. But it’s amazing how you can work at Trust HQ and only see the same small number of faces.

These visits will just be informal drop-ins, but I’m very aware that people have been working really hard recently, with lots of competing demands, coupled with anxiety about how TUPE associated with the transfer of community services will impact teams.

I am very grateful to all staff that have been affected by the transfer of community services for your professionalism over the last few months. So, I wanted to finish by thanking everyone, whatever service you work in across our Trust, for your continued efforts. It makes a real difference and the results are evident.

We’ve seen it with our finances for example, and although we still have an underlying deficit, thanks to everyone's efforts, we have finished 2018/19 in a better place than expected.

And it’s not just money where your efforts are paying off. We’ve hit some tough annual targets for 2018/19 as well, such as delayed transfers of care, mental health access targets and information governance training.

So, a huge thank you for your commitment and hard work. It is very much appreciated.

Best wishes,

Claire