Need to know
For #TeamEEAST Last updated: 18 May 2024 at 07:08
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for everything you are doing for our patients and for each other.
Industrial action
As you will no doubt be aware, members of the GMB and Unison unions at EEAST are taking industrial action over the national issue of pay next week.
Members of the GMB union will be taking industrial action on the 6th and 20th March, while Unison have so far announced strike action on the 8th March.
The timing of the action is as follows;
Industrial action has taken place at other ambulance trusts and in other sectors for several months now. At EEAST we set up an Incident Management Group (IMG) when this national action was first announced. As you would expect planning has intensified since the announcement in February that GMB and Unison members have both voted for industrial action after a reballot.
We understand the strength of feeling behind the concerns colleagues have around this issue and we are committed to working with our unions to improve working lives at our service.
We must also do all we can to keep patients safe during industrial action, so we have been working closely with our unions for derogations on the days of industrial action – so we can agree what calls members will leave the picket line to attend.
We plan to publish the details of those derogations and detailed Q&A for managers and for staff on Need to Know as soon as the details are confirmed so please lookout for this.
Community hubs
Our Clinical Strategy is in development and thank you to all who contributed to the survey on its design last year – and for those working on it now.
It won’t be a surprise that we are focusing on system-wide working to manage the demand on our services. A key part of this is the development of local community hubs – with one within each of our integrated care systems (ICSs). These hubs will support the external stack providing access to a place-based integrated multidisciplinary team, with us working in conjunction with health and social care providers within each of our ICSs across the east of England.
These hubs will allow local healthcare professionals, to take urgent calls waiting to be answered on the 999 within Cat 3-5, ensuring that these do not lead to the dispatch of an ambulance or other emergency response.
We’ve been hard at work on planning these community hubs, and NHSE has written to all ICSs to ask them to develop these as a regional priority – either in place or with plans to deliver by June.
Watch this space for further details.
Freedom to Speak Up
Many of you will have participated in the interviews with the National Guardians Office review of Freedom to Speak Up. The report, published on 23rd February, found that the culture across ambulance trusts needed to change to support workers to speak up to protect their wellbeing, and ultimately, patient safety.
Thank you to all who participated in this report as it is really important we tackle this issue.
As EEAST we would encourage everyone to speak up about any issues through any of a number of routes available - through your local FTSU advisor, your manager, or through any other routes.
Ambulance Speak Up Review Report is available at www.nationalguardian.org.uk.
Community Champions
As part of the Coronation celebrations, the Royal Voluntary Service is launching the Coronation Champions Awards celebrating extraordinary volunteers across the country who contribute to their communities.
They are currently looking for nominations for volunteers who have overcome challenges or found new ways of supporting their local communities during the last five years. If you are interested in finding out more about the awards there is further detail on NTK , or you can email our Head of Community Response, Lorna Hayes. Nominations close Sunday 2 April, 2023.
Photo shoots
Over the coming weeks we are beginning the series of inclusive photoshoots across the region, which will enable us to refresh our stock image library and ensure that the pictures we are using really represent our workforce and community. To those of you who have already volunteered a big thank you, we can’t make it a wholly representative project without your support. If you’d like to be involved in the project then you can find out more and express your interest about being part of the photoshoots here.
Thank you Thursday
Thank you,
Kate
Published 2nd March 2023