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Empowering Clinical Leaders Programme launched in Tower Hamlets - Stepney and Whitechapel (Network 3)

At the recent Primary Care Live conference a seminar was fronted by Charles Marshall (from Healthskills) and Caroline Gillett (Network Manager from Stepney and Whitechapel) to discuss the setting up of clinical networks within Tower Hamlets and the recently launched clinical leadership programme designed to drive the project forward.

Healthskills successfully kicked off the 12 month programme for clinical leaders in Stepney and Whitechapel in the summer. Against the backdrop of the White paper and the drive to organise PBC consortia there will inevitably be a heightened need for effective leadership within General Practice.

The programme covers a wide range of topics which will flex and develop over the year as the details of coalition’s policies become clearer. The main objective will be to equip this group of GPs and senior practice staff with the skills and leadership they will need to succeed in this new environment.

Threaded through the programme will be clinical projects which will provide measurable outcomes at the end of the programme. Support will be provided through action learning, personal coaching, 360 degree feedback and a range of highly interactive and practical business skills workshops.

The network identified effective clinical leadership as one of the key drivers for Practice Based Commissioning and felt it was important that they hit the ground running as the consortia emerge over the coming months.

Healthskills client shortlisted for HSJ Award

Congratulations to NHS Tower Hamlets who have been shortlisted in the Quality and Productivity category of the HSJ Awards for the development of their Quality Assurance Framework. Healthskills Director, Ann Hepworth, facilitated work earlier this year to help to develop the framework. You can obtain your own copy by accessing the web link.

Healthskills published in Action Learning: Research and Practice

Dr Mary Holmes has had an article published in the July special issue of “Action Learning: Research and Practice” (Holmes M. 2010 Team Challenge and action learning. Action Learning: Research and Practice 7, no 2: 221-226). The article describes how action learning can be accompanied by a project to encourage shared learning about organisation culture. It draws on Healthskills experience of integrating action learning into its leadership development programmes to deliver tangible benefits to the local community.

You will soon be able to access further articles by Mary through the Healthskills website including “How can action learning liberate the NHS”. If you would like us to alert you when these become available please email lucie.lee@healthskills.co.uk

Healthskills join debate with Stephen Dorrell

Healthskills joined the debate at the Broadcast seminar and breakfast reception held at Policy Review Westminster Studio on 15 September. Ann Hepworth and Paul King were invited to join a small audience who debated the challenges of reforming the health service with Stephen Dorrell, chaired by Roy Lilley. You can view the full debate through this link www.policyreview.tv/video/481/2207

Healthskills invited to Health Policy live TV debate

Healthskills are delighted to have been invited to participate at a morning reception and live broadcast discussion on the outlook for the Health sector including the Autumn announcements, legislation and reform.  The debate will be held at the Policy Review Westminster Studio

Discussions will be led by a distinguished panel of leading health policy makers and commentators, including: 

• Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell MP, Chair, Health Select Committee
• Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, Honorary Professor of Public Health, King's College London
• Nick Bosanquet, Professor of Health Policy, Imperial College and Special Advisor on public expenditure to the Commons Health Committee

The next three months will reveal the detail and extent of the biggest changes in UK public policy and public service delivery for 3 decades.  This programme and reception will set the scene and explore how managers, policy makers and organizations are preparing for these changes.

Healthskills at ‘Primary Care Live’ conference, London, 30 Sept

We are very proud to have been asked by the organisers of this year’s ‘Primary Care Live’ conference to facilitate a workshop on “Developing Leadership in New Primary Care Networks”. Charles Marshall from Healthskills will join colleagues from NHS Tower Hamlets in sharing our experience and learning from delivering an outcomes focused leadership development programme for GPs and other clinical leaders who are spearheading their new primary care networks.

The programme is based on the successes of working with clinical and commissioning leaders in Tower Hamlets for the last 3 years. Over 90 people have benefitted from the Healthskills ‘Leading Service Improvement’ programme, implementing improvements to service provision as a direct outcome of the programme.

Access to the ‘Primary Care Live’ conference is free to all NHS health and care professionals and managers – it will be held at the Excel Conference Centre in London on 29 and 30 September, and at Manchester Central on 25 and 26 November 2010. It looks like an exciting event with over 200 speakers and 100 exhibitors, delivered through 12 different conference streams; so there is definitely something to suit everybody’s interests.

You can book your place by accessing their website www.primarycarelive.com

Healthskills will be running the workshop at 11.00am and 3.00pm in the ‘Practical Skills Workshops’ conference stream at London on 30 September – we would love to see you there!

 

Transforming Providers

The move of Community Provider organisations to new homes is a complex organisational change with both transactional and transformational considerations.  Busy leaders already coping with major change may require additional capacity or capabilities to effectively manage this change by 1 April.

The partnership of Ararna Limited and Healthskills offers organisations a unique proposition that offers quality and expertise during large scale organisational change. Transformation in mergers can be extremely challenging and can often impact on service delivery and more importantly, the workforce. Our organisations have come together to assist organisations through every stage of the integration process not only focusing on the strategic elements but helping to ensure that operationally, services continue to run smoothly with minimal interruptions. The workforce planning elements underpin the change process and the combination of skills between both organisations will inevitably provide something that is unique and different.

The information attached provides a full outline of the services we offer including:

• Capacity and skills assessments
• Organisational development planning
• Staff engagement sessions
• Agreeing evaluation frameworks
• Workforce modelling
• Career and performance coaching
• Impact assessments

We would be happy to discuss your needs for support.  To arrange a meeting with a Director from Healthskills or Ararna, please contact Tess Knight on 0800 652 3322 or at tess.knight@healthskills.co.uk

WISMS Project Evaluation – 7 June 2010

Healthskills have been supporting WISMS (Wakefield Integrated Substance Misuse Service) with a programme of leadership development and service user engagement to achieve a radical change in care for substance misusers through positive and effective change in culture and leadership since 2007, in conjunction with a commercial partner, Schering Plough.

The aims of the project were:

• To develop competence and confidence across the WISMS partnership to initiate and lead service change
• To engage service users, clinicians and managers across all disciplines within the broad substance misuse arena to improve networks and partnership working
• To develop a set of markers that will measure impact on outcomes, and provide a ‘dashboard’ that will meet the expectations of commissioners, the needs of the service users and the ambitions of the service providers

At the recent meeting to evaluate the project:

• Commissioners reported that “(WISMS) think more innovatively about the way they provide services”
• Service user engagement was reported as “I get the impression that its done here in Wakefield at a level above that I’ve seen elsewhere. Its not tokenistic…” and “SU’s have become partners in care”
• Leadership development feedback was reported as “I don’t think I would be where I am now without the leadership training course. It gave me the confidence to do things I didn’t know I could”

WISMS become one of only 16 Department of Health Integrated Care Organisation (ICO) pilots during 2009 and Healthskills are now supporting Dr Linda Harris (Clinical Director) and her team in the move to a social enterprise organisation. If you would like to find out more about work supporting WISMS, Mark Greenfield would be pleased to help you; mark.greenfield@healthskills.co.uk

SHA North West Leadership Awards – 26 May 2010

Ann and Mark from Healthskills were delighted to be invited to present an award at NHS North West Leadership Academy’s Annual Conference and Awards, held at the Palace Hotel, Manchester on 26 May. Here is Mark presenting the award for Service Improvement through Leadership to Suzanne Lomax, Matron-Stroke at Royal Bolton Hospital NHS FT, together with John Humphrys from the BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme who chaired the conference.

The award recognised a leader who has transformed services through fundamental change, and Suzanne has demonstrated outstanding leadership in improving the patient end to end stroke pathway using the Bolton Improving Care System.

Our congratulations go to Suzanne and to all the other leaders we work with who use their skills to deliver better quality outcomes and experiences for patients.

Work with NHS South East Coast

Healthskills are delighted to be working with NHS South East Coast.  We will be developing a learning hub to support the development of personal health budgets for long term conditions.  This will involve creating a virtual learning environment using state of the art intranet technology, coupled with high quality and energised action learning.  The work will start over the summer and Healthskills very much looks forward to working with Alison Lorimer and her team.

Changing Their View of the World

Healthskills are working with an Ambulance Trust with a remit to facilitate the rapid development of their Assistant Directors (ADs). There is a requirement to alter their behaviour. Obviously we could have done this in a variety of ways; workshops, action learning with reflection and one to one coaching all of which have their place. We wanted to do something differently though, something that made them alter the view that they had on their world in an authentic a way as possible. In short we wanted them to perform as different people within their own organisation. So we created a challenge for them to engage with using a “leadership relay” so no-one quite knows who will get the baton at different times; all are engaged and engrossed.

Picture the scene; there has been an outbreak of Norovirus and the system is in chaos. "Meat and drink" you would think to an Ambulance Trust but in this scenario the whole Executive team are off site and the ADs are now running the place and suddenly they are really running the organisation as the entire Executive team is hospitalised. The team are now engrossed in sorting out who is doing what and when; emergency scenario plans are being invoked at pace when suddenly they are summoned to the control room to watch a breaking "Health News" story. The whole system is in chaos it proclaims; a local celebrity has contacted them as she cannot raise an ambulance to a sick child. Health News want an interview and “need to know what’s going on” but the new management team haven’t the time for this until one member of the team suggests it maybe an opportunity for them to reassure people during the interview and to get a professional message across. A truly amazing moment as the Health News interview takes place and a leader’s outlook is changed forever. The final briefing note to the Strategic Health Authority Chief Executive who is about to meet with Andy Burnham is a breeze.

Changing their view on the world really worked and inspired them and generated a very exciting and insightful three hours.

Congratulations Mary

Mary Okoth is a participant on our "Leading for Better Outcomes" programme at NHS Hammersmith and Fulham. She has been selected to join the "Breaking Through: NHS Top Talent" programme by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. 21 people were selected from 200 applications. She puts her success down to her learning from our programme.

Leadership Programme photos

Participants from the South East Coast NHS Ambulance Trust enjoying a recent leadership programme workshop:

Rather than sending out Christmas cards to our clients, colleagues and the wider team last Christmas, we sent an e-card, and gave a donation to www.wishes4kids.co.uk, a Leicester-based charity that makes dreams come true for terminally ill children. The charity sent us a lovely letter of thanks, and told us details of who the money went to help.

HSJ Awards 2009

The HSJ Awards for 2009 were announced at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London on Monday 30th November. In the Primary Care Organisation of the Year category, NHS Tower Hamlets were Highly Commended, and were Finalists in the Good Corporate Citizenship Category. In the World Class Commissioning Category, NHS Wakefield District were Finalists.

Healthskills would like to congratulate both healthcare organisations for these excellent achievements and look forward to continuing our work with them in 2010.

Team Healthskills Skydive

The Fantastic Four, aka the Healthskills Business Support team set off on an intrepid mission to Wiltshire on 12th September. Their mission: to leap out of an aircraft freefalling from 10,000 feet and land safely at Redlands Airfield five minutes later. And remembering to bring a parachute and tandem instructor.

After a thorough training session lasting, oh all of 30 minutes the team assembled, supremely confident and ready for action. They didn't realise that there was to be a considerable wait whilst all the nervous fliers were selected before them. But the sun shone, there was lots of family support and a giant picnic courtesy of Tess 'Delia' Knight plus baby Evan (eight months - Team Mascot) to keep us all amused, ensured that the time would whizz past.

Soon the moment arrived and Tess and Adi were asked to go first, followed thirty minutes later by Lucie and Fiona. Lucie said she didn't mind waiting as although her instructor did not in the end turn out to be George Clooney, he did say he would cancel the jump and take her out on a date!

Soon the assembled supporters were craning their necks and checking the sky to see who we could spot first. Then the team landed one by one, packed up their parachute with their instructors and made their way back to to the applause of family and friends and some well earned champagne. "Exhilarated", "Fantastic" and "Speechless" were some of the comments, the last by Tess who then couldn't stop telling us all about the experience!

Well done on a brave and enthusiastic team effort, and for the generosity of our sponsors which means that Cancer Research UK has benefitted by well over £1,000. Go to www.justgiving.com/fionahumphreys2 if you would like to contribute.

The Directors have a tough challenge to beat in 2010!!!

Healthskills Joins Forces with Humana

We are delighted to announce that Healthskills will be working with Humana at Leicester City PCT from October this year. Our work will revolve around facilitating the organisational development of the PCT Commissioning Executive and Clinical Cabinet. Anne Tofts, Healthskills Managing Director noted “this is an exciting piece of work to be involved in and we are delighted to be working with Humana in taking the PCT forward.”

National recognition for Barbara Hakin and Alwen Williams

We are very pleased to be able to congratulate two of our valued clients on their recognition in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Chief executive of NHS East Midlands, Barbara Hakin, was made a dame for services to healthcare, and Alwen Williams, chief executive of Tower Hamlets PCT was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the health service.

Both have made incredible contributions to the NHS including leading two of the best performing NHS trusts in the country. We have worked with both Barbara and Alwen supporting service transformation and organisational development since the inception of Healthskills in 1996; its very well deserved recognition for two women who embody great NHS leadership.

London Nurse Network – Homelessness Supervision Group

Healthskills work with this group was established on the basis of a grant from the London Network to set up a series of learning sets for healthcare professionals working with homeless people or people living in temporary insecure accommodation.

An initial launch meeting took place in July 08 and a set of needs were identified which set the course and direction for the learning set (supervision group)

Purpose and aims of the group

1. Dealing with the isolation of working in homelessness healthcare and providing tangible support
2. Setting up a key project for the supervision group with a clear and tangible outcome
3. Widening the interest and influence of the group to other healthcare professionals
4. Establishing a source of knowledge and information for that wider group
5. Providing an effective lobby for the group to influence senior policy makers
6. Establishing and connecting with existing networks

Outcomes

1. The establishment of a core supervision group dealing with current issues in health for the homeless
2. Production of a comprehensive knowledge and skills framework
3. Regular network events throughout 08 / 09 with presentations around current issues
4. Wider connections with active working groups in this discipline

The initial project has now been completed but it is hoped that the good start that this group has made will continue into 2010.

Medical Leadership Development

We are sure that you are all aware of the innovative and exciting work that has recently been completed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and the Academy of Medical Royal College to develop a medical leadership competency framework.

The intention is that the framework will eventually be integrated into all undergraduate medical teaching, providing junior doctors with an understanding and introductory competence into their leadership roles within the clinical team.

We are working closely with members of the project team to create an integrated suite of leadership development programmes and learning opportunities that will help doctors in post to acquire and demonstrate leadership qualities and behaviours appropriate to their seniority and experience.

We will be launching these new programmes during 2009. If you would like an early insight into our thinking then please contact Charles Marshall  charles.marshall@healthskills.co.uk

Healthskills Team Skydive

In a rash moment last January the support team all decided to do a sponsored skydive. The jump date of 16th May was postponed due to bad weather. The new date of 11th July is fast approaching, and if you want to sponsor us, it's really easy through www.justgiving.com We're raising funds for Cancer Research UK

Clinical commissioning: DH vision for practice-based commissioning

The Department of Health’s recently published report “Clinical Commissioning, our vision for PBC” is part of a renewed drive to put clinicians at the centre of commissioning.

The report restated DH’s view of PBC and concluded with some interesting views about the future......

“PBC consortia are a key element in many of the proposed integrated care pilots due to be launched shortly. Successful PBC consortia or federations of practices are potentially well placed to develop into integrated care organisations (ICOs). A PCT could commission an ICO to take on direct responsibility for an extended budget, as well as providing primary care for a registered population, effectively becoming the ‘primary care home’ for the wider health and healthcare needs of this population. PCTs would hold the ICO to account for quality of care, health outcomes and financial stewardship, leaving the ICO to take ‘make or buy’ decisions about how these outcomes are achieved.”

Healthskills is enabling clients in their journey to achieving ICO status and each of these clients has PBC at its centre or as a key partner. One client is a successful PBC consortia in London, now developing a joint venture with an American based provider of medical management services for managed care organisations. They have an ambitious vision of how an ICO can continue the trajectory of improved health and wellbeing for their deprived population. We are supporting them by facilitating their strategy development, undertaking a fitness for purpose assessment of the practices to deliver this strategy and then providing development to support improved delivery. Their ambitions echo the DH’s vision of clinically led local providers who use their knowledge of the local population to commission and deliver quality outcomes and we are proud to be working with them.

If you would like to find out more, please contact Ann Hepworth on 07867 538165 or ann.hepworth@healthskills.co.uk

Tower Hamlets Alumni to be Launched

We are very pleased to be able to support Tower Hamlets PCT in their new venture establishing an Alumni of all staff who have benefited from leadership and management development programmes.

Tower Hamlets PCT has supported leadership development for clinicians and middle managers for more than 3 years.  75 people have now completed or in the process of completing the leadership programme that Healthskills have run in partnership with Tower Hamlets – the Leadership for Service Transformation programme.

Tower Hamlets are now seeking to help individuals further their skills by joining the THPCT Leadership Alumni.  This is an opportunity to shape the future of leadership within Tower Hamlets and network with colleagues from across the trust.

The Trust has delegated the design and initiation of the Alumni programme to 2 of the Trust’s Stepping Out" Leadership Secondees.  These are graduates from the Leadership for Service Transformation programme who want to further develop their leadership qualities and seek advancement within the Trust.

If you would like to find about more about either the Leadership for Service Transformation programme or the THPCT Alumni then Charles would be happy to help  charles.marshall@healthskills.co.uk

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Transforming Organisational & Team Culture

We read with considerable interest the article in the Health Service Journal “The managers who saved Maidstone – transformation from Board to ward” (9th October 2008 Alison Moore).  The article describes the journey that the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has been on since sensational headlines brought them into the glare of the national media over serious superbug outbreaks.  The article begins the story by describing the changes in infection control measures that were made but then moves on quickly to illustrate how the new management team had to try and change the overriding culture of the Trust.  The challenge was a daunting one and first impressions indicated:

• An organisational malaise and lack of clarity about responsibilities
• Low staff morale
• Lack of effective communications from Board to ward

 This Trust is now well on its transformation journey and the article really resonated with so much of the work that we do.  Although there were clear problems with infection control processes the powerful message that came through was that safety requires dynamic leadership and high performing teams and that organisational culture can significantly affect ultimate success or failure.

In the last 12 months we have worked with teams the length and breadth of the NHS.  Some of that work has involved delivering leadership programmes to both clinicians and non clinicians but we have also worked with teams for shorter time periods and helped them facilitate team improvements, regain organisational energy and focus and challenge a “team culture” that maybe hampering ultimate team success.  This short “burst” work has included:

• A review of the North West Maternity Screening Team. The team had gone through several reconfigurations but problems still existed and so we were tasked with a function review, staff interviews to understand the issues and developed solutions for moving forward. The work was very well received by the client and all of the recommendations were accepted.

“The report made very interesting, if slightly uncomfortable reading!  Your recommendations seem eminently sensible to me. Thank you for all your efforts - you made a very difficult exercise almost enjoyable.  It would be good to work with you again.”

Dr Alison Rylands, Director of Public Health, North West Specialised Commissioning Team

• Working with Consultant Obstetricians at the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust helping to bridge the communication gap between clinicians and senior managers.  The Trust faced a challenge in relation to the future of maternity services that were currently split across 2 sites and the Chief Executive was keen to get an objective view from the consultants.  We were tasked with interviewing the consultants allowing them to air their views and potential frustrations and then work with them to produce a consensus view which we achieved.
• Facilitating potential service improvement by understanding team issues within a theatre team at City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust. This particular team had been through a financial turnaround process and morale was low so we were tasked to engage with them to facilitate service improvements ideas and to refocus team energies.
• Focusing on improvements to the Elderly Care Team at Darent Valley Hospital.  We worked with the team over a 4 week time period helping them develop a new sense of direction.

 Please contact our programme manager Lucie Lee to discuss how we could help you.

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Healthskills start work with NHS London

Healthskills have been successful in tendering against stiff competition to work with NHS London to develop a plan that will build organisational capability to reflect its future role and needs.

We will reflect on where the organisation sees itself against these capabilities, where stakeholders view current strengths and challenges and design a plan with the whole organisation to fill the gaps and develop an organisation fit for the future.

The key elements of the programme are:

NHS London key elements diagram (click to enlarge)

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Developing Leaders for World Class Commissioning

Healthskills successfully competed against in excess of 100 other organisations who tendered for the Hammersmith and Fulham PCT management development programme.  2 organisations have been awarded the contract, ourselves and OPM.

We will collaborate with OPM and the PCT to co-design and deliver an innovative, work based learning programme that builds internal management and leadership capability to deliver World Class Commissioning and the creation of a successful Independent Provider Organisation (IPO).

Our strength in World Class Commissioning and vast experience of delivering empowering leadership development programmes and engaging clinical leaders will help the PCT to meet its WCC Assurance Standards.