Unseen, unsung

Last week I watched the last ever episode of Game of Thrones. Apologies to those of you who have never watched a single episode (this blog may not make a lot of sense!) and to those of you who do, I will try not to do any spoiler alerts.

I got into this television juggernaut only about six months ago, and after an intense binge of two to three episodes a night, I caught up with the many millions in loving this epic drama.

Whilst there has been a lot of noise on social media about whether the finale lived up to expectations, there was one scene that struck a bit of a chord with me.

Tyrion Lannister, as the newly appointed King’s 'hand' has gathered his Council around him to assess the devastation of the wars. He is handed the A Song of Ice and Fire book which the clerics have written to tell the story of everything that has happened.

Tyrion asks with trepidation how badly he is depicted in the book, only to be told he doesn't feature at all! As viewers of the show will know, Tyrion has been absolutely pivotal in every series, one of the characters with the greatest integrity, and in some sense, one of the most influential people in the story. So it's surprising that he isn't mentioned.

Rather unfairly, the kings and queens, knights and nobles are the people talked about and portrayed with immense power, but so often it is the unseen and unsung heroes - not recognised in the stories - that make the biggest difference.

And that’s true in our everyday lives. There are lots of people doing great things who remain quietly in the shadows. We need to find ways of acknowledging the impact and importance of these unsung heroes, and find ways to show our appreciation.

Because it is these quiet heroes, which we have all across our organisation, that keep moving us forward. They’re not high profile, but each and every day they work hard, shape things and make a difference. They aren’t seeking the limelight, as all they try to do is the right thing.

We're very modest as an organisation, but I would love to applaud and celebrate these quiet heroes more.

So, it's great to see a recent wave of teams and individuals getting more public recognition for their work, such as our estates team who won a prestigious national award last week and Chris Reynolds in our Informatics service who has just been listed in the 'top 100' chief information officers in the UK.

We’re also hearing about many other local heroes, via visits to clinical teams and uplifting social media stories. Judith Crosby, our service development director recently tweeted about her great visit to the Tatton unit in Tameside, where she gained greater insight into the rehabilitation journey that patients are on. Judith described a “lovely calm feel and positive atmosphere” and name-checked Michelle Davies for rightly being so proud of her team.

Nicky Littler, our workforce director, also tweeted about her visit to Prospect Place in Rochdale. She thanked Gemma Mlambo, our rehab services manager and Pip for “sharing his poem” - let’s keep ‘sharing the love’ via social media.

And while we’re on social media, I’m also going to name-check and thank some staff members for bravely sharing their personal stories during Mental Health Awareness Week which ran this year under the theme of ‘body image’-: Katie Benson, Sam Hartley, Shusha Smith, Sam Mooney and Ciaran Wilkinson. You impacted and inspired so many people.

Well done also to social media queen Inez Ingham, whose powerful photo post on our HMR children’s respiratory specialists Facebook page encouraging people to use their inhaler has gone viral reaching 4.5 million people.

There are so many others that I could name, but that would make this blog ridiculously long, so let’s all keep giving our quiet stars the attention and appreciation they deserve.

We want to do more to recognise and thank people through sharing your stories, recognising your achievements and celebrating your successes. We’ll be launching our staff awards in June, with new categories.  Please look out for these and put people forward. The awards are open to both individuals and teams and you can nominate yourselves and others.

I know that many of our community service colleagues will be leaving us shortly, but we really want your nominations. These awards are an important opportunity for us to acknowledge and celebrate your tremendous successes and contribution.

Best wishes,
Claire

The value of bullet-proof hair and hairspray

Many of us did hilarious and cringe-worthy things with our hair in the 80s.

And I'm no exception.

Yes, this is me, with the bullet-proof hair in this photo. When I fished it out to use in my introduction to the vision and values workshop this week, my daughter joked that it demonstrated I valued hairspray above everything!

I used this photo to kick off the workshop as a way of sharing what has shaped some of my personal values.

Some of you will know, I dropped out of university after finding out I was pregnant which was a total shock as my husband was recovering from cancer and had been told he couldn't have children.  So, when I look at this family picture, it reflects the strong values of hopefulness and optimism I hold; that life can bring you wonderful things even when you least expect them.

It also reflects my value of determination (or as my husband occasionally refers to it - stubbornness!), because I did manage to return to university as a mature student and completed my degree. It was tough, but if you work hard enough for something you want, it is possible, even if it takes a bit longer than you thought.  And given that I am still married to my hubby, I could throw in loyalty as another value close to my heart.

There's also resourcefulness, as it’s clear from the photo I cut my children's fringes to save money (which they have never forgiven me for). And finally, surely sharing this photo of our amazingly bad hair cuts demonstrates openness and bravery!

You'll each have your own values shaped by your experiences and lives. But we spend a lot of time in work, so it's important we have values for our organisation; and that those values resonate with all of us. Our values should inspire and guide us.  Values determine our behaviour, which determines our culture, which determines our outcomes. It's why they are so important to get right.

So, that was what this first workshop focused on, as we wanted to test the work we've done to develop new values, as well as look at the behaviours that we'd like to see in order to bring these to life.

We're giving some thought as to what to do with our existing CARES values. Its recognised that these work well as guiding principles for clinical teams. But we want our new values to be more distinctive and really able to guide all of our interactions; not only with the people we serve, but with each other and with our other partners.

We'll be sharing our new values of course, once we have assimilated everything from the workshop this week and another that is taking place next week. We're also doing some testing of the values with service users and carers, as it’s critical they have an opportunity to shape them as well.

There was great energy, ideas and input in the first workshop this week. We had people attending whose experience, in terms of NHS service, ranged from 40 years to four months, which was great as a richness of different views is so valuable.

It's mental health awareness week and so it was appropriate that we also spent some time at the workshop talking about our future strategy, as we shift our focus more to mental health and learning disabilities in the future.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to come and for sharing your views. I look forward to another engaging session next week.

For those of you who haven’t been able to come, don’t worry; we will find a way of sharing the work, and I will give an update on the development of our strategy in a future blog.

Best wishes,
Claire

Looking out for each other and SAS Who Dares Wins

One of my most recent service visits has been truly profound, and not in a way any of us could have imagined.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent time visiting several mental health services in Oldham, which included our Cedars Assessment Ward for dementia patients at Oldham Hospital.

As I witnessed the skill, commitment and compassion on Cedars Ward and in all the mental health services in Oldham, I thought about how incredibly close a team must become working side-by-side day after day; sharing care, ideas and experiences.

I was so impressed and impacted by the team spirit and camaraderie I saw in the services there, and so just a few days later, I was heart-broken to hear that Saima Riaz, a nurse on Cedars ward for 10 years, tragically died over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

We were all so shocked and upset with the news, and devastated for Saima's family, friends and colleagues. Our hearts and thoughts are with everyone that has been impacted by this and I hope you are getting all the support you need.

The Cedars Ward staff have described Saima as "a great nurse who was full of life, knew how to make people laugh and lifted people's spirits". They are putting a book of memories, tributes and photos together for her family, and if you would like to contribute the details will be on our intranet and in Connected, our weekly email update.

It puts everything into perspective, but I do want to touch on some other things in this blog.

We're approaching a significant couple of months as we prepare for the transfer of our community staff in Bury, Oldham and Rochdale to the Northern Care Alliance on 1 July. This will be the single biggest TUPE, with staff in Trafford, dental, child health information and Rochdale children community services then transferring to providers at later dates.

Alongside this, we're finalising work on our new values and progressing our strategic plan, with more workshops and events this month to ensure everyone can contribute. Please keep coming to these events and feeding in your views; we can’t do this without you.

The timescales for everything are tight, the milestones are momentous, the challenges are complex and the details are complicated. So, basically no mean feat and I know there’s an immense amount of work going on and pockets of real pressure. I am so grateful for everyone’s hard work and keeping going despite the uncertainty and sheer volume of work. 

Again, I hope you are all getting the information and support you need, looking out for each other and looking after yourselves.

I said in a previous blog that I was planning to drop in and see our corporate teams, just to see how you are doing. I know we all work in the same building, but I'm very aware we rarely get to see each other (maybe we need to knock down some walls!?). I have arranged to drop in on a couple of corporate team meetings and although I haven’t yet managed to do a walk around, I am still intending to do this as soon as possible.

I just want to end this blog with name-checking some important campaigns and awareness weeks…

A powerful and poignant Shining a Light on Suicide campaign has launched this week in Greater Manchester, which we have been involved in. It aims to take the subject out of the dark by getting people to talk openly about suicide. It’s the biggest killer of men under 49 in our region.

I don’t know whether any of you have been watching Celebrity SAS (where a bunch of TV personalities and former athletes are being put through the brutal entry assessment for the SAS as part of the Stand-up to Cancer charity), but I’ve been fascinated watching this from the comfort of my settee. It’s clear just what physical and mental stress this sort of assessment puts people under, but also the long-standing emotional issues that surface within people’s lives.

In a recent episode, former footballer Wayne Bridge broke down talking about the things that had impacted on his confidence and how hard finding purpose has been for him after his footballing career ended. What struck me the most, was the heart-warming scene with a couple of his fellow male competitors hugging and comforting him as he cried; and just how compassionate and supportive they were in their response.

I have a son who has experienced challenges with his mental health and so know just how hard it can be for men to open up and share their feelings. So, I am so pleased to see that we’re running two mental health awareness sessions especially for male staff on 16 May at Horton House in Oldham, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week.

We’ve also got Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Week coming up and International Nurse’s Day on 12 May. Look out for information about all of these and help us raise awareness and celebrate via social media. I will no doubt say more about both of these in a future blog.

Finally, I hope you all enjoy the bank holiday weekend (despite a lot less sunshine predicted for this one). Thank you to those who are looking after patients over this time, and I hope you also get some time to relax.

Best wishes,
Claire