Thursday 24th June - Leadership message from Dr Tom Davis, Interim CEO

Dr Tom Davis

Over the summer, you will start to hear more about our longer-term improvement plan which we are calling Fit for the Future. The aim of this plan is to properly address the issues staff and our regulators have raised over the last couple of years - with many of these issues going back much further.

I don’t want to get into the details of the plan here. Instead, I want to take a minute to say that these plans do make a difference and change can happen. Since our last full-on CQC inspection in 2019, we have actually made significant progress on a range of serious areas. We have improved safeguarding and mandatory training, recruitment and retention and our response times for patients. You can read more on our progress since 2019 here.

By working together we can make a difference. The latest Pulse survey results we shared last week showed, for example, small but important improvements in tackling poor behaviour. We will do our best to make our plan relevant to you and your patients. That’s how we will take everyone with us.

To support wellbeing for our people – in particular colleagues with disabilities - we recently launched our Stronger Than You Think programme. To help staff get the most out of the programme, there is an online diagnostic tool to provide a personal analysis of their resilience, relative strengths and development areas. You can find more information here.

Finally, I would like to welcome Tom Burton from the regional NHSE team, who will be supporting EEAST on secondment as our strategic planning director. Tom’s secondment is part of the system’s support for us as part of special measures and will help the Trust to manage demand over the coming months.

Thank you and stay safe

Tom

Dr Tom Davis
Interim CEO

Published 24th June 2021