October 2015 – Issue 22

Over 100 members attended this year’s inspiring Annual Members’ Event at Brierley Hill Civic Hall. Members soaked up the electric atmosphere as they talked to teams from across the Trust about their achievements and future plans for their services.

This year’s event featured the first Time to Shine wall of fame showcasing services, from across the Trust, which have been highlighted for their great achievements or nominated and successfully won some fantastic awards in the last year. The Time to Shine contributors included The Lighthouse, The Positive Behaviour Support Team, Wolverhampton Healthy Minds and our Workforce Development Team for their work on the Trust’s apprenticeship scheme.

Members were also asked to get involved as services asked them for their thoughts on topics such as new branding, new websites and future service developments. They also had the opportunity to visit our popular Governor Corner to speak to their local Governors about any issues or concerns they have or to find out more about being a Governor themselves. As if all that wasn’t enough members could also visit a video booth and record their comments to help improve communication and future events.

The event produced some excellent feedback and thoughts and we are looking forward to developing these further.

Members help celebrate Trust’s achievements

In this issue.. .Apprentices achieve success ............... P2Making a difference together ................ P6Shaping our future supplement ............ P7Preparations for CQC .........................P11If you have a story contact the Communications Team on 0121 612 8032

02

Apprentices who joined the Trust in August last year were treated to a special celebratory afternoon tea on 12th August, to recognise the fantastic achievement of having successfully completed their apprenticeship.

Placement managers, colleagues and guests gathered to recognise the hard work and achievements of our apprentices, whilst Joanna Newton, Chair of the Trust formally recognised their hard work and commitment with the presentation of certificates.

Seven of our apprentices are now substantive members of the Trust having successfully been appointed to band 2 and band 3 healthcare assistant posts. Other apprentices are also progressing their career by having obtained substantive posts in other healthcare settings and taking up nurse training places at university. Well done and congratulations to them all, what a great achievement.

Lynn Weston, Support Workforce Development Lead says: “I am extremely proud of our apprentices. They have demonstrated hard work and commitment, and have bought something new to the

Trust with their enthusiasm and ideas. It has been a joy working with them all and I wish them all every success with their futures. Cohort 2 apprentices are equally as committed and are already displaying unique qualities that exceed their roles. Cohort 3 will be starting

with us in October and it is planned for further cohorts to join us twice per year from 2016 onwards. Apprenticeships are definitely the way forward and I look forward to working with existing and future apprentices both clinical and non-clinical in the future”.

Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWP) are part of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) workforce. Our Trust is part of a consortium, with Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust (BSMHFT) and University of Birmingham, which provides their professional training and qualification for the West and East Midlands.

The Department of Health recently issued a new national curriculum for PWP training and so the programme team, led by Bobbie Petford from Wolverhampton Healthy Minds, have redesigned the whole training programme. The team felt the redesign was a great opportunity to find out directly from patients who have used psychological therapy services what is really important to them.

Patients took part in a process influenced by an approach called ‘experience based co-design’. They told their stories and described their experience of services, and then told the team the type of attributes, skills, knowledge and experience they felt PWPs need to have to do their job effectively.

The patients provided an invaluable insight into what really matters to them, and what stood out was the need to be treated respectfully, listened to and understood, as well as a high level of technical proficiency in psychological therapy. This closely follows the 6C’s – ‘care, compassion, competence, communication, courage, commitment’ - model used in nursing and allied health professions. Bobbie and the programme team will ensure that these qualities are given the emphasis they deserve in PWP training and will use the 6C’s model to support it.

Experts by Experience Contribute to the Curriculum

Apprentices Achieve Success

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It’s that time of year again and the Trust remains committed to ensuring all staff and patients are protected against flu. For otherwise healthy people, flu is unpleasant but a full recovery is usually made within a few days. Nevertheless in 2010/11 it is estimated that up to 1/3 of deaths from flu were in people considered to be healthy. The risk of serious illness is higher in children under 6 months of age, older people, pregnant women, immunocompromised and those with underlying health conditions. Studies in healthcare professionals have shown that 30-50% of flu infections can be asymptomatic.

You may think that you don’t need the flu vaccine if you are in good health but you could still pass the virus on to your

patients, family or colleagues.

Flu clinics for October are as advertised on the intranet and further dates will be publicised over the coming weeks and

months.

Protect yourself, your family, colleagues and patients – be a flu fighter, get your flu jab.

The Family Nurse Partnership team were highly praised at their annual review for the great work they do supporting young mothers and babies.

FNP is a preventative programme for vulnerable young first time mothers in Dudley. It offers intensive and structured home visiting, delivered by specifically trained nurses, from early pregnancy and for the first two years of the child’s life. The service has been so well received that Dudley Council identified funding during the year to expand the team to eight nurses offering a capacity of 200 places.

Focusing particularly on the graduation of the first group of young parents and babies, there were some fantastic comments made about the service and praise for the way the team operates including Mary Griffiths, FNP National Unit writing in her review summary: ‘this annual review has encapsulated good leadership, excellent collaboration, clearly agreed vision and aspiration for young families, commitment, enthusiasm and positivity (summary comments by attendees).

There was also praise for the way in which evidence was provided to give a clear picture about the different aspects of the programme delivery with examples and explanations that enabled the Advisory Board to engage in detailed discussions about key issues of interest. The Advisory Board were particularly engaged by the young mother who attended and told her story, giving an insight into the issues and challenges that many young parents face, and how the FNP can begin to bridge these into an optimistic, brighter future. In this case the young mother discussed

her chaotic early life with frequent changes of social worker, foster placements, schools and all that ensues from such insecurity, and how she is now confidently and competently being the mother she wants to be, has given up smoking, attends college and plans a future that includes university to train as a social worker! She said “I want to better myself for him (son) – he is my motivation!”

Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) praised at annual review

Be a Flu Fighter

Get Your Flu Jab!

04

The sun shone as 50 young mothers and babies, their partners and grandmothers went down, not to the woods, but to Bufferey Park in Dudley for the Family Nurse Partnership annual Teddy Bears picnic.

The picnic was organised as an opportunity for young mums to meet other young people who are either expecting or have a young child, to help them to form friendships and build their confidence in a safe environment. Opportunities for role modelling included a range of healthy eating, finger foods for the toddlers, as well as age appropriate safe play.

Activities included foot painting, football, blowing bubbles, guess the weight of the baby and relaxing hand massages for all mums. At the end of the day the picnic was brought to a close with story time and rattle and rhyme, provided by a local book start coordinator.

Supported by partner organisations, the Children’s Centre, and Mothers Union, who provided a variety of wonderful food, the day was a great example of everyone working together and was testament to the success of the picnic.

Teddy Bears picnic

On the 16th of June 2015 Walsall Promoting Access to Mainstream Health Services (PAMHS) staff had the great pleasure of hosting a local engagement event for people with learning disabilities from ethnic minority and new migrant communities living in Walsall. The purpose was to raise awareness of learning disabilities and the support available, and to bring people with learning disabilities and their needs to the attention of those providing support locally.

In the last five years, a team of researchers from the University of Wolverhampton, working together with the Association for Real Change, has been exploring the numbers and service requirements of people with learning disabilities from new migrant communities (the Here to Stay research project, (funded by the Big Lottery Fund)). And although national, the project has a strong local focus on the Black Country and Walsall in particular.

With more than 500 participants consensus agreement was used to agree what needs to be done to improve things and make recommendations. Thus the next step was the event to move things forward and implement the recommendations. The biggest success of the event was linking the visitors with the services available.

Speakers included: Councillor Angela Underhill (the Mayor of Walsall) who recognised the significance of the event and expressed her gratitude to those providing services in local communities; Dr Akhoury Shanker (GP, Pleck Health Centre) who emphasised the role of the general practitioners in identifying and supporting people with learning disabilities; Mr Ian Staples (Lead Commissioner for Learning Disabilities, NHS Walsall/Walsall Council) who shared his insights into the problems of local communities and commissioning joint services, and Prof. David Sallah (University of Wolverhampton)

who brought to our attention that people who are perceived as hard to reach are not always hard to reach.

The event was jointly organised by NHS Walsall, Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) and the University of Wolverhampton and thanks go to everyone involved in what was an excellent engagement event.

For further information please contact Julia Kelly, Lead Nurse PAMHS on 01922 658800.

Engaging people with learningdisabilities in Walsall

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Lee Allen, a business performance manager, who works at Delta House, became a volunteer for the Alzheimer’s Society nearly two years ago and a Dementia Friend Champion more recently. He saw volunteering as an opportunity to go out to organisations to raise awareness of Dementia and talk about the Alzheimer’s Society work towards developing Dementia Friendly Communities.

Lee remembers well the lunch break in August 2014, when he was flicking through a magazine and found an article about Dementia Memory Walks. Lee said, “I thought joining in a walk sounded like a great idea and soon roped in a couple of colleagues who were willing to walk with me. An information pack arrived and in talking to friends and colleagues, I quickly realised that I could get about 30 people walking.”

Lee decided to put a simple post on his Facebook wall and started to receive notifications from people he didn’t even

know! So he developed a Black Country Memory Walk Facebook page and Twitter account, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Lee said, “It’s hard to explain what happened over the next couple of months but I found myself thrust into the celebrity lime light of TV and radio interviews providing me the opportunity of raising the profile of dementia and the Memory Walk. With regular meetings and support from the Alzheimer’s Society and Sandwell Mytime Active, we were able to hold a successful event on Sunday 9th September with over 450 people walking for a world without dementia. Matt Murray from Wolves Football Club and radio presenters Jo Russell and Andy Goulding from Free Radio also attended with a broadcast trailer from local radio station Bridge FM. Never did I think a lunchtime conversation would have turned into an event that has already raised over £12,000 with sponsorship money still being collected.”

Lee would like to give a special mention to JJX Logistics from Wolverhampton for their support and donations, all of which played a big part in helping to make the event possible.

Lee said, “To see 450 people start a walk that you have organised all in aid of a charity that is close to your heart is certainly emotional. Everybody knows somebody who has been affected by Dementia. My life has certainly been affected having worked within older adult mental health services and having several very close relatives live with the disease.”

Lee does it for Dementia

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The Walsall Promoting Access to Mainstream Health Services (PAMHS) team held a successful information day to promote the use and understanding of the recently launched ‘Making a Difference Together – Health Toolkit’, at Walsall Manor Hospital. The event was well attended by staff, patients and visitors.

The toolkit was developed to provide a dynamic resource that would support healthcare professionals when caring for people with a learning disability.

The toolkit has three specific themes:

access to healthcare safe healthcare end of life care

For many people with a learning disability accessing NHS healthcare remains a frightening experience. The toolkit focuses around improving access to healthcare both in hospital and the community for people with a learning disability.

Julia Kelly, Lead Nurse PAMHS says, “There is compelling evidence to support the view that people with learning disabilities have worse health and greater unmet health needs. It is therefore really important that practitioners make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to their practice which include the use of good communication aids, many of which we have in this toolkit.”

The toolkit also has a free app which can be downloaded onto any android device. The picTTalk app can be used by a range of health professionals to help people ask questions, indicate choices and share information about health issues.

Further information can be sought from the PAMHS team at Orchard Hills House.

Making a Difference TogetherHealth Toolkit information day

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There have been some exciting developments in the Healthy Minds and Wellbeing Service, including the development of a Dialectical Behavioural Therapy programme (DBT). The programme is an evidence based therapy for people whose difficulties are indicative of Borderline Personality Disorder.

A multi-disciplinary team has been established, following intensive training, consisting of a principal counselling psychologist, a wellbeing nurse and a cognitive behavioural therapist. The team is also able to offer placements to trainee psychologists.

The service has been running for nearly two years and delivers the full DBT programme, which involves skills teaching, individual sessions and telephone coaching. Because of the known difficulties of engaging this client group, individuals start the program with 3-6 sessions of pre-treatment, where we gain their commitment before they are accepted into the full DBT program.

The weekly teaching, taught over a six month period, covers four modules; emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and mindfulness. Individual sessions are provided to look at consolidating new skills and to work behaviourally on providing Chain and Solution Analysis’s focusing on unhelpful behaviour. The purpose of telephone coaching is to provide a specific range of skills to clients, offering them the opportunity to receive direct skills based tuition whilst outside of the therapy room.

A few clients who have completed the full program have started a post DBT service user led group. The clients meet regularly to support each other and continue to use the DBT skills in their everyday lives.

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) in Primary Care

The Trust is on a journey to improve staff experience, culture and communications. We recognise that we need to create a culture in which the potential of all our staff is nourished, recognised and released in daily interactions and ways of doing things together.

The results of the 2014 national staff survey and feedback from staff engagement events indicated that there were a number of areas where we need to improve the staff experience and levels of engagement to facilitate this cultural change.

A number of programmes and initiatives have already been implemented to respond to these challenges.

To remind you, some of the actions we have taken include:

Ú Need to strengthen the culture of constructive challenge and holding to account at all levels of the TrustÚ Greater levels of engagement are required with staff across the org on numerous issues including development and implementation of strategies, governance arrangements, key decisions etc.Ú Lack of understanding of the long term vision (Trust and Service)Ú Lack of visibility and engagement with senior staffÚ Lack of clarity around roles, skills, competencies and responsibilitiesÚ Lack of staff resources and supportÚ Lack of leadership and management development

We recognise that things are not going to change overnight and we understand that there are still areas that need to improve. We have therefore refreshed our plans to ensure that we continue to make progress.

What you told us:

Shaping our future

Listening & learning

Shaping our future Listening & learning

A range of interventions across each of the areas are planned to support improvement, these include:

Engagement & CommunicationÚ Every Voice Heard programme in conjunction with BME Staff Network and Rudi Page

Ú Embed and continue to improve existing mechanisms e.g. Team brief, quarterly staff awards, “It’s all about you” event for other staff groups e.g. for medical staff

Cultural Alignment Ú Cultural Alignment

Ú Implementation of Freedom to Speak up requirements

Ú Embed values based recruitment

Ú Development of the “Our Voice” pulse survey

Ú Membership of the national cultural alignment programme supported by a range of experts from the RCN,NHS Employers and Kings Fund.

Leadership & Management Development Ú Develop/refresh modules to support values based

recruitment and Freedom to Speak Up.

Talent ManagementÚ Implement Care Certificate for new & existing

HCSWs/AHP/Psychology roles

Ú Implement process for nurse revalidation

Health & WellbeingÚ Develop Health & Well Being strategy

Organisational EffectivenessPatient experience & Staff experience (culture)

The plan has 5 main areas of action as shown in the model below:

Shaping our future model:

Structures, procedures and systems

Strategic Objectives and plans

Vision, Values & Behaviours

Engagement & Communication

CulturalAlignment

Leadership & Management Development

Talent Management

Health & Wellbeing

Enablers

Underpinning foundations

Outcomes

Shaping our future Listening & learning

Cultural Alignment ProgrammeBCPFT has committed to be involved with The National Advisory Group for Cultural Alignment (NAGCA). The Programme is supported by a cross section of experts from the Royal College of Nursing, the NHS Leadership Academy, NHS Employers, NHS Professionals and other healthcare sites: Sherwood Forest NHS Foundation Trust, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust. The purpose of the group is to provide organisations with access to support, knowledge and expertise at a national level to ensure the process of cultural alignment at each site is optimised, and everyone is supported in achieving their organisational development plans.

The Trust has been welcomed into the programme because we have demonstrated a commitment to achieving a positive cultural alignment at Board and Chief Executive level with the acknowledgement that improvements need to be made.

It was with a sense of excitement and pride that Sue Wakeman, Director of Workforce and Organisational Development, Joyce Fletcher, Deputy Director of Nursing, attended a site focus day, held at RCN Head Quarters in London, on Friday 11th September to present BCPFT’s progress against our Organisational Development plans. They were aptly accompanied by the Award Winning Health Visiting Team (who recently won the Group Excellence Award at this year’s Annual Staff awards), Joy Williams, Acting Service Manager and Health Visiting Team Leaders, Julie Greenway, and Lgah Satnam, enthusiastically told how they have successfully transformed the culture within the Health visiting services to become a high performing successful team. Julie Greenway said “it has been the small steps that have made the difference; like being open and

honest and showing we respect and trust each other and supporting staff to just get on with their job”. Joyce Fletcher summed up the presentation by saying how far the health visiting team had come and she was very proud that they are now being recognised as being one of the best teams in the West Midlands.

“Our Voice” survey results – What you said!To check how we are getting on and to help us to continue to improve we introduced the pulse survey “Our Voice” in August. The survey asked for your views on your job and the trust as a place to work. 386 of you took the opportunity to have your say.

The key results were:

Valu

es, C

ulture & Communications

Quality of Care

Inci

de

nt reporting/Raising concerns

of you said that the Trust listened to

staff views

20.4%

of you said you were proud to work

in this Trust

37.3%

of you said that you were kept well

informed about what is happening in the Trust

34.2%of you were satisfied

with quality of care you can give to patients/

service users

72.2%of you would be happy with the standard of

care if a friend or relative needed treatment

43.8%

of you felt secure raising concerns about unsafe clinical practice

55.2%

22.4%

of you believed that the Trust treats staff

who were involved in errors, near misses or

incidents fairly

28.6%

of you stated that you received feedback about

changes made in response to reported errors, near misses or

incidents.

Colle

agues: respect & support

Team

: support & management

Ability to do the job

of you felt respected by your work colleagues

78.5%of you were satisfied

with the support you got from work

colleagues

78.4% of you were satisfied with the support you received from your

immediate manager

62.5%of you felt your line

manager treated you with respect

72.4% of you were unable to meet all the conflicting

demands on your time at work

45%

of you said you knew exactly what is

expected of you

65.3%

Shaping our future Listening & learning

The 2015 National Staff Survey has commenced. Once again the Trust is undertaking a full survey of all staff. You will have received your survey attached to your September payslip. Ideally, you need to return your completed surveys by the end of November 2015. We would encourage you to complete this and tell us what you think so that we can continue to improve services for staff. And remember, the survey is completely confidential and you can complete it in works time.Staff side and HR are available to answer any queries you may have around the staff survey. Contact Caroline Marshall in HR on 0121 612 8135, or Phil Cole - staff side lead on 0121 612 8258. Alternatively, you can look on-line at: www.nhssurveys.com.

For more information about this programme please call Rudi on 07958 744660 or email rudi.page@bcpft.nhs.uk. Alternatively you can email gail.parry@bcpft.nhs.uk or call 0121 612 8160.

As part of the Trust’s 'Shaping our Future’ plan, employee engagement has been recognised by the Board of Directors as one of our key priorities, and critical to achieving cultural change.

In order to ensure the work around cultural change is taken forward effectively the Trust has commissioned an external facilitator, Rudi Page, to carry out the ‘Every Voice Heard’ programme. This is designed to foster inclusion and create an enabling environment for collaboration and team working. It adopts an ‘all voices must be heard’ approach.

Rudi started his work with the Trust by attending the Leadership for Quality

Summit on Tuesday 8th September and spoke about the aim and purpose of the programme. Rudi said, “My approach to the implementation of the ‘Shaping our Future Programme’ recognises the Trust as one organisation serving populations across one geographical area comprising Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton.”

He continued, “We need to engender a values-led approach. Motivated teams, working and thinking together, making best use of their organisational memory, skills and expertise will devise workable plans, which is the best route to achieving the Trust’s five strategic objectives.”

Rudi has already met with a wide range of staff and teams and will be working intensively with everyone until the end of November 2015, facilitating group discussions and 1-1 dialogues. The work is being supported by a Programme Board, comprising of the Chief Executive and the project Executive Lead Sue Wakeman, Director of Workforce and Organisational Development, and other Executive Directors. Work streams are already emerging that will focus on: staff wellbeing and performance, clinical strategy development, medical workforce involvement and the Trust as one network - promoting inclusion.

‘Every Voice Heard’ programme

The results indicate, as expected, that we still have a long way to go to improve the staff experience and levels of engagement. A number of the areas of concern were already known to the Trust and therefore plans are already in place to address these, including:

ÚFreedom to Speak up – revised raising concerns policy out for consultation with staff side, campaign to improve staff awareness of how to raise concerns and the support available to them if they do.

ÚRecruitment task and finish group to speed up recruitment processes and therefore improve staffing levels

ÚReview of communication vehicles and channels to ensure critical messages get to all staff e.g. team briefs and lessons learnt bulletins available to all staff.

As well as using the results to inform our existing plans we will be involving staff in what else we can do to make a difference. Group level results will be made available to managers to enable them to understand any areas of particular concern for the staff in their teams. This will enable local level actions to be taken as well as the trust wide interventions.

If you have any good ideas or want to be involved please let your manager know. There are numerous ways for you to get involved in helping to “Shape our Future” such as attending the Leading for Quality summits, providing feedback via the team briefing process, becoming involved in the BME Staff network etc. or you can get involved in the ‘Every Voice Heard’ programme.

What happens now?

Shaping our future Listening & learning

11

Preparations for CQC visit progressing

We are making good progress with the preparations for the CQC visit which commences on Monday 16th November, but still want staff to email any reports, audits, good news stories, innovative practice and information that you have to support the 5 fundamental standards to cqc.evidence@bcpft.nhs.uk. As a reminder the Governance Assurance Unit (GAU) will be collating evidence during the visit so that clinical staff will not be asked to provide information.

The board of directors and governors named below are responsible for leading on the 5 fundamental standards, and as you will have seen, have been out and about talking to staff and patients to gain an insight in to what we do well and what we need to improve upon.

The SAFE team have identified seven key issues which they will be concentrating on over the next few weeks. They have also identified some fantastic innovative work which will feature in our ‘Time to Shine’ section on the intranet.

The seven key issues are:1. Records management: health records management and

safe storage2. Safeguarding : making sure that staff are able to access

training and that it is evidenced day to day3. Policy Implementation: are our policies easy to find and

use, and do staff use them day to day, out in our services

4. Training: particular emphasis on recording and monitoring of training for assurance purposes

5. Vacancies and recruitment: one of the biggest challenges for the Trust

6. Environment: is it safe and appropriate, ensure plans are being developed to move to single sex areas

7. Community services : confidence in dealing with the inspection

Focus GroupsThe CQC are really keen to talk to staff, CCG’s, local authorities, Healthwatch, families and carers of older adults from our mental health service, learning disabilities and children and young people services during their inspection. We have therefore organised a number of staff focus groups during the inspection week, please see below for dates and venues. If you want to speak to the CQC inspectors make sure you go along to an appropriate session because this is your opportunity to get involved and make your voice heard.

Staff Group Date Time Location

Registered Nurses 17th November

9am Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

Student Nurses and health care support workers

17th November

10.30am Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

Admin and Clerical 17th November

1pm Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

Consultants / Associate Doctors

18th November

2pm Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

Junior Doctors 18th November

3pm Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

Psychologists 19th November

9.30am Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

AHP's 19th November

11am Conference Room Edward Street Hospital

CQC Inspection Guidelines for staffA CQC Inspection Guidelines booklet was launched on 8th Septem2015 at the Leadership for Quality event and is now being distributed to all staff. Please contact your manager for a copy of the guidelines which provides useful information that will help you prepare for our CQC visit.

Operationally all actions are being managed and monitored by corporate managers through a weekly meeting held every Wednesday from 2-3pm. Gill Murphy, Associate Director of Nursing, is also out and about visiting teams to support them in their preparation for the visit. If you want Gill to visit your team please contact: sarah.meakin@bcpft.nhs.uk.

The leads are:Caring Sheila Lloyd, Parmjit Sahota, Sonia Davies

Responsive Tracey Cotterill, Joanna Newton, Sandra Prince

Effective Stephen Edwards, Jas Lidher, Andrew Fry, Peter Sinclair, Alan Dean

Well-Led Karen Dowman, Duncan Walker, Phil Cole

Safe Lesley Writtle, Fayaz Malik, Mark Wood, David Hellyar

Shaping our future Listening & learning

12

NEXT ISSUE...Grapevine is your quarterly newsletter. If you would like to contribute your news and

views to the next edition, please send items to

communications.team@bcpft.nhs.uk by 30th October 2015

The first wellbeing workshop facilitated by Samina Allie (Psychologist) and Hayley Flowers (Assistant Psychologist), held on Abbey Ward on Tuesday 15th September was much appreciated and enjoyed by all who attended.

The workshop was an opportunity for patients to contribute to discussions around what improvements they would like to see made on the ward, and what they appreciated about the environment they are in, which included valuing the support they receive from dedicated ward staff.

The workshop was also used to launch the ward’s new ‘calm down trolley’ which is linked to the safe wards initiative. The calm down trolley offers patients wanting to take their ‘as needed’ (PRN) medication as a way of managing their distress, alternative ways and ideas of dealing with it.

Patients and staff were introduced to ideas around mindfulness practice and other coping strategies, and both staff and patients contributed to ideas around what they would also like to see in the calm down trolley.

Staff also ran mini activities throughout the evening as a means to encourage patients to engage and distract themselves.

Samina said, “We’ve had an amazing response from patients to this workshop. They knew the environment was a safe one to speak up in and this gives people confidence to speak out. I want to thank everyone who was involved for their continued dedication and commitment to the ward.”

Abbey Ward Wellbeing Workshop

Black History MonthCelebrating As One!For Black History Month this year we are holding a celebratory event open to all on Wednesday 21st October from 4-7pm at The Lighthouse, Edward Street Hospital in West Bromwich. The event is part of the Trust’s Shaping our Future: Listening and Learning Programme, and we would like you to join us to celebrate the cultures and contributions of BME (black and minority ethnic) staff at the Trust, as well as patients and local communities.

Why not pop-in to see us at The Lighthouse and help us celebrate through food, music, stories, poems, creativity and sharing of information.

For more information about the event please contact the Equality and Diversity team on 0121 612 8167 or email equality.diversity@bcpft.nhs.uk