My week: Staff side, consultants and board time out

Hello,

It’s been a pretty significant week in terms of progress and developments.  I met with the staff side partnership officers on Monday and we had a very honest discussion about their perspectives on what it’s like to work at the Trust and the challenges faced by staff.  It was good to hear from them and I am encouraged that we will develop a good working relationship.  I consider that our Partnership Officers have a critical role within the organisation and I value hugely their contribution and role that the Joint Negotiating and Consultation Committee plays. To this end, I will be attending a development session with the Joint Negotiating and Consultation Committee (JNCC) members next week and will endeavour to attend future JNCC meetings.  

I also met with Lisa Ryder, our Freedom to Speak Up Guardian on Monday.  Lisa’s role is about supporting staff to raise and handle issues effectively and helping create a culture of openness where staff are encouraged to speak up, lessons are learnt and care improves as a result.  I was very assured by Lisa’s approach to the role and would encourage staff to get in touch with her if they had any concerns they wanted to raise in confidence and didn’t feel able to raise through other routes. 

I also spent time meeting with over 60 of our medical consultants as part of their away day this week.  It was an opportunity to share some of my emergent thoughts with them and test what we need to do for the future.  This particularly included the need to strengthen clinical and professional leadership.  In order to build a clinically-led organisation, we need to have visible and strong clinical leaders and the appetite from the consultant body to support this was great.  Thanks for inviting me, I enjoyed talking with you! 

I mentioned last week that the board would be taking some time out to focus on the Trust’s future strategy.  We started the session on Wednesday afternoon and Jon Rouse, Chief Officer of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, joined us to give an overview of the direction for Greater Manchester and explore with us Pennine Care’s future role within the system. 

We then spent all of Thursday considering our future direction and organisational development priorities. After a lot of hard work we are really starting to see things come together now.  We will need further work to develop and refine things and then we are planning to hold some staff engagement sessions in the New Year to test our thinking out with staff and give you an opportunity to help shape our direction of travel.  Watch this space for more detailed information about this important agenda.

I’ll be ending the week today (Friday) by meeting with Theresa Grant, Chief Executive of Trafford Council, to discuss how things are going in Trafford and exchange ideas.  

So all in all it’s been a pretty packed week but I can see that things are really starting to take shape now.

Thanks as ever for reading,

Claire

Claire Molloy

Chief Executive

E: ceo-penninecare@nhs.net

T: @ClaireMolloy2

My week: Planning ahead and sustainability

Hello,

 

At the start of the week I took a day out of the office with my executive team colleagues to do some reflecting and forward planning.  It was a really good day and a chance for us to talk about our organisational position and agree a sense of priorities, certainly for the medium-term anyway.  We will be taking this early thinking into a full board strategy session next week, which will then inform a business planning day on 24 November, involving around 100 of our leaders and managers.  I will continue to keep staff up to date as plans become more concrete, which will likely be in the New Year. 

Staff will be aware that we have this year planned a deficit financial position of -£6.6m, whilst also needing to implement a number of quality improvements following the last two rounds of CQC inspection, particularly on mental health wards.  It is likely that the deficit will further increase next year to as much as -£16m.

It is well reported that trusts up and down the country are facing financial struggles, but we do need to make changes in order to move forward. It is clear coming into the organisation that year on year cost improvements are beginning to impact on quality, as highlighted in the CQC inspections.  Our Board have recognised the need to invest in improving quality, in areas such as safe staffing, and this is one of the reasons why we are planning to have such a large deficit next year. 

However, we know that we will need to consider how we can improve our position going forwards and return to financial balance. We cannot resolve these problems alone and are working with our commissioners and other key partners to address them.  I met with colleagues from NHS Improvement this week to discuss the matter and they will be working closely with us to agree the improvements necessary.  I believe this is the catalyst for change we need to really get the system behind us and ensure we can move forward with additional help and support. Watch this space for now. 

Lastly, I was unable to visit community services in Rochdale on Tuesday - sorry to the teams that were expecting me!  I will ensure the date goes back into the diary as soon as possible.  

That’s about it for now…

Thanks

Claire  

Claire Molloy, Chief Executive 

@ClaireMolloy2

Email: ceo-penninecare@nhs.net

My week: Oldham, Rochdale, Governors and partners

Hello,

I’ve had the opportunity to get out and about and spend time with different clinical services over the last few days, which has been brilliant. 

Last Friday, I spent time with community services in Oldham and was incredibly impressed with the advances they have made with integration.  I learnt about the adults cluster team model in Oldham West where adult nursing, primary care and social care staff are fully integrated and collocated.  I also visited the fantastic staff at Butler Green and heard how they have grown from a single unit to a whole intermediate care pathway, including a rapid response team and discharge team working in the hospital.  I also visited some of the children’s nursing and therapies teams in Oldham, who again have very well established pathways and examples of integrated working.   

I’ve also visited mental health services at our Birch Hill site in Rochdale this week, spending time with staff at Beech ward, Moorside and Hollingworth ward.  I listened to the stories from staff and the daily challenges they face when caring for people with complex mental health needs.  These jobs are not easy and we need to help by improving the ward environment.  This is being picked up through our estates improvement plan but I recognise that we need to move forward at a quicker pace, led by the clinical teams. 

After spending time in both mental health and community services, I was struck by how well services are moving forward in their specific localities and service lines, but not necessarily together as a combined physical and mental health offer.  With us all being part of the same organisation there is definitely room for improvement on how we work closer together, under the whole person care ethos.

We have this week had our first Strategic Partnership Board with commissioners and partners sat round the table.  It is chaired independently by Jon Rouse, chief officer of the GM Health and Social Care Partnership.  The purpose of the meeting is to help partners appreciate the challenges faced by the trust and jointly own responsibility for moving things forward. 

I attended my first full Council of Governor’s meeting and was able to share some of my early thoughts on observations, whilst also hearing from them.  I’ve also had very productive meetings with some of our key external partners Karen James (Chief Executive at Tameside Integrated Care) and Steven Pleasant (Chief Executive Tameside Council) and separately Gaynor Mullins (Chief Clinical Officer at Stockport CGG).  I’ve also met with Colin Scales (Chief Executive at Bridgewater NHS Trust) to talk about opportunities for networking and sharing between our community teams.

So all in all it’s been another very busy but productive week.  I am certainly getting to know people around the trust and would like to thank everyone for continuing to make me feel welcome.

Thank you

Claire

Claire Molloy
Chief Executive

@ClaireMolloy2

E: ceo-penninecare.nhs.net  

Update from Claire Molloy, Chief Executive

Having just returned from holiday on Wednesday it’s been a short but action-packed week for me.  

My first day back was straight into my first formal Trust board meeting - you can read my Chief Executive’s report and the board papers on the Trust website.

A significant discussion focused on how we take forward a refresh of the Trust’s business strategy, our identity, our services and the part we play in the wider health and social care system. 

We’ve got some Board time-out planned in November to work on this further and there will be opportunities for staff to be involved over the next few months. 

It was also good to see our new Chair Evelyn Asante-Mensah attend the board meeting in preparation for commencing in post from 1 November. 

I also attended a thank you and farewell lunch for current Chair John Schofield.  I would like to thank John for his support in welcoming me to Pennine Care, for his immeasurable contributions over the last 10 years and wish him well for the future.

On Thursday I chaired a meeting called the Quality Improvement Board, which has all of our executive team members and senior partners round the table to shape our strategy in response to the CQC inspection, recognising that many of the recommendations we need to make require collaboration.  Two of the big discussion points were on mixed sex accommodation and safer staffing on our inpatient wards. 

I am spending today (Friday) out visiting frontline services and the local management team for the Oldham locality.  I’ll talk more about this in my update next week.

I hope you find these short updates a useful way of keeping up with Trust priorities and progress, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on more plans over the coming months as they develop.

Many Thanks,

Claire

Claire Molloy

Chief Executive

Email: ceo-penninecare@nhs.net      

Twitter: @ClaireMolloy2 

"Thank you for making me feel so welcome"

It is widely recognised that the first 100 days of a new Chief Executive are really important. It’s that short period of time that you have when people still afford you the luxury of calling you ‘new’ and look with interest at your approach and style. It is also a time when you are most able to be open about what is needed going forward, influenced by people who work in and with the organisation.

I am obviously only a short way into my first 100 days so it’s still early days. However, as I near the end of my fourth week with Pennine Care, I thought I could usefully share some reflections of my first 100 hours in post.

I have had a lovely warm welcome – everyone has been friendly and positive about me being here, which always helps!  So, thank you for making me so welcome.

I have also been struck by what a hugely talented and committed workforce we have. I attended the Annual General Meeting last week and was simply blown away by the enthusiasm and passion of the teams and individuals talking about their services on the stalls in the market place. And then the CARES Awards themselves were just so moving and inspirational. I watched the videos of the divisional winners being quite in awe of the effort that people were going to and the massive positive impact this had for people at the heart of those services. I only managed not to shed a tear or two with the pure emotion they evoked by dint of being in a public place!  

The fact that it was such a hard task selecting the winners and that we had 61 applications means that across the organisation we obviously have some brilliant teams and services which we need to find ways of hearing about and recognising.  Because, as I said in my welcome video, if we get it right for staff we will probably get it right for people who use our services. This will form a key underpinning principle of my approach going forward, with a strong focus on creating a positive, open and learning culture, where we make it easy for people to do their jobs and make the most of the talent we have.

We know the improvements we need to make on the back of the CQC inspection and are committed to these, but we also need to create an approach to innovation and improvement more widely. There are undoubtedly lots of pockets of great practice and support available to help people with improvement work. What I see as a priority is bringing this together in a clear way so that this becomes the way we do things around here.

I’ve been spending time meeting people inside and outside of the trust.  For me, these early days are a crucial time to learn, absorb and reflect.  I’ll be spending a day visiting services and leadership teams in each locality over the next few weeks.  My first visit was in Trafford yesterday and it was fantastic to hear about their integration journey for bringing together adults and children’s health and social care services. 

I am also delighted to have announced the appointment of our new Trust Chair, Evelyn Asante-Mensah.  Evelyn is an outstanding candidate and brings a wealth of different experience to further enhance our board.  This new leadership signals an important change for Pennine Care and together we will build on the Trust’s strengths, whilst also considering a new future direction and different ways of working.  It is a very exciting time for Pennine Care!

   

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, I’ll be posting further blogs and updates about things I am looking at over the coming weeks.

Best wishes

Claire

Claire Molloy 

Chief Executive

Twitter: @ClaireMolloy2
E: ceo-penninecare@nhs.net

Hello from Claire Molloy, Chief Executive

Today has been my first day as Chief Executive of Pennine Care.  I am very pleased to be here and am looking forward to meeting staff and patients over the coming weeks and months.  I’ve already had a walk round today to start to meet with people. 

I’ve also filmed a short welcome message, which you can view on the Trust website.

I have over 20 years’ experience in the NHS, working a variety of roles across different settings.  For the last four years, I have been Chief Executive at Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which has many similarities to Pennine Care, as a provider of both community and mental health services across multiple boroughs.  

Community and mental health care is a particular passion, which was of course one of the major attractions of the role.  Pennine Care offers something unique as a provider in Greater Manchester and we need to make sure we use this to benefit our patients and the wider health and social care system.  This will continue to be a key part of our approach and strategy moving forward, ensuring we protect and maintain our services. 

I know Pennine Care has fairly recently reviewed its Strategic Plan, but I want to spend some time looking over our strategy and providing a clear simple story about our future direction.  It’s really important that people understand who we are, what we are about and how they contribute. 

In keeping with this, I am a firm believer that if we properly look after staff, we will in turn provide the best possible care to patients.  So I am really looking forward to working with you to make Pennine Care a great place to work and a place you can be proud of.  I know lots of good work is already happening in relation to this, but it is something that I will be taking a personal interest in.  

I will also be spending some time getting to know our partners and external key stakeholders to build good relationships.  This includes stakeholders within each of the six towns we serve, as well as at a Greater Manchester level.   

I’ve already got quite a lot of meetings and events arranged and will be coming out to meet with staff on the frontline over the coming weeks and months.  I’ll be sending out regular updates but would really like to hear your thoughts and ideas too.  

You can follow me on Twitter @ClaireMolloy2 or email ceo-penninecare@nhs.net 

Best wishes, 

Claire 

Claire Molloy
Chief Executive  

"It is a testament to their unwavering commitment to providing the best possible care to patients" - visit to Bury walk in centre

I recently visited the team at Bury walk in centre.  They’ve had a difficult time of late due to mounting staffing pressures, which has meant the centres at Bury and Prestwich have been having to close on some days.  

There has been some uncertainty around the future of the centres following a review of urgent care across Bury but Bury Clinical Commissioning Group has recently announced that the centres at Prestwich and Bury will remain operational until at least 31 March 2018, whilst further plans are formulated.  The CCG has been working with Pennine Care and GP provider BARDOC to develop proposals to stabilise service delivery at both centres until this date.  As a result, Prestwich is now being managed by BARDOC and Bury will continue to be managed by Pennine Care.  This is a welcome move, as it means our staff will be able to continue to safely provide a consistent service to local patients. 

 

Just to confirm the opening hours are as follows:

• Bury walk in centre: 7am to 3pm*, seven days a week - First floor Moorgate Primary Care Centre, 22 Derby Way, Bury, BL9 0NJ
• Prestwich walk in centre, 12pm to 8pm*, seven days a week - Fairfax Road, Prestwich M25 1BT

* The last appointment is 30 minutes prior to closing to enable staff to appropriately and effectively assess people.

 

We will continue to support the team whilst the urgent care review is ongoing.  I recently met with the Bury North MP James Frith to talk about the walk in centres and what efforts the trust is taking to ensure they remain open.  It was a positive discussion and one I am sure will be revisited once future plans are confirmed.

 

Despite the challenges facing them, the clinical and management team have shown great resilience and determination.  They shared many examples of where staff have gone over and above to make sure the centres could open.  It is a testament to their unwavering commitment to providing the best possible care to patients.  

Thank you,

Martin

Martin Roe

Chief Executive (Acting)