We Are EEAST Briefing - Thursday 5th August

 

The latest We Are EEAST Briefing and Executive Q & A comes from our new Chief Executive, Tom Abell.

Hello everybody and thanks very much for joining me this afternoon for this, my second Chief Executive Q&A session and briefing. What I’m going to try and use the time for today is obviously for me to give an opportunity to introduce myself and talk a little bit about some of the priorities as I see them for the Trust, but also give you an opportunity to ask any questions that you might have.

If you do have any questions please do type them in and submit them and we will try and work through them all as fast as we can. Some certain questions we might have to take them away if they are really detailed, but we’ll try and answer them all.

So, again, thank you to everybody who has been so welcoming. I started with the Trust on Monday, so this is day four for me. I joined from Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust, which was the Trust that provides hospital services across Basildon, Southend and Broomfield hospitals, and previously worked in commissioning in mental health services.

So, hopefully I’ve got a lot to bring to the Trust, but equally I understand that there is a lot to learn and as I have been out and about over the course of the last few days people have been really, really generous with their time and really open and honest in terms of their feedback in terms of the things that we’re doing well as an organisation, but also the area’s where we’ve got a lot more work to do.

So, the first thing I wanted to say was a big, big thank you to everybody. I know that the last few weeks have been incredibly difficult and stressful for a lot of us as we have had to respond to the really extreme pressure that we’ve see within the Trust and that has been seen nationally by all other ambulance services in the country.

We’re doing a lot of work this week to see how we can better support the front line, and so we’re working with colleagues in Fire, I’m meeting the executive teams from some of the hospitals where we’ve had real challenges around turn around times, and we’re starting to thing now about Winter and making sure we’re properly prepared and resourced for what I think everybody thinks is going to be quite a challenging Winter for us all.

It’s really important that we get those plans right, and we get those plans sorted early to make sure that we have enough time as we enter in to the Winter to tackle some of the other challenges and issues that I know that we face as an organisation, and particularly those issues that we face around our culture.

So, in terms of our culture, we are working on a number of key challenges and key issues. So, the first of those is around OFSTED and so I wanted to recognise the disruption and apologise for the disruption that a number of our learners have had as a result of the OFSTED inspection and the outcome of that.

We’re working really hard to secure a new training provider, which we hope to do in the next day or two, so we’ll be able to say a little bit more about what steps we’re taking to support learners with transition to a new training provider and making sure that they’re appropriately supported in the workplace on an ongoing basis. So, we’ll talk more about that with you next week.

The second area that I know that we have a number of problems and we’ve got a lot of work to do on is around employee relations cases. We’ve got a number of very long-standing cases which have taken too long for us to resolve, and I think it’s a really important thing that we get those closed and resolved and so people have certainty in terms of the outcome of those and can see that the organisation is moving forward. Because I think it is really critical if we are to change the culture of our Trust, if we are to become a place that, you know, everybody is welcome and everybody feels valued and supported, it really requires us to make sure that all of our systems and processes work for our people and can be recognised and supported by our people. Because obviously if some of those things don’t work actually, quite rightly, a number of you would be concerned in terms of our ability to respond to new issues or new concerns.

So, we will continue to do that and obviously we will continue to push on with the good work that has already started around the Speak Out Stop It campaign to really challenge poor behaviour in the workplace and to tackle issues around inequality that we have currently within both our policies and procedures but also in terms of unfortunately the way that some of our colleagues treat one another.

The last thing that I’m doing, which I will be writing out a bit more about next week, is focusing on how do we make sure that we’ve got good and stable leadership within the Trust. Clearly, unfortunately, I know that over the last number of years the Trust has gone through a number of Chief Executives, and you’ve gone through a number of changes in senior leadership that has been very disruptive and probably not helped us make some of the progress that we really want to see.

So, firstly I’m going to start the process to recruit to a new executive team for those executive posts that are currently filled on a fixed term or interim basis, so we have leaders that can be with us for the next three, five, seven years to help support the organisation on it’s journey of improvement that we’re already on.

The second area, and I met with LOM’s and General Managers and Head’s of Operations earlier today, is looking at how we can best support our managers throughout the organisation, not just in operations, to be able to support their teams effectively and have the time to be able to not just respond to the issues and the fires that we are trying to fight today, but also start to think about the future and supporting how we develop our people to move forward and to support all of us to be the very best that we can be.

I know all of that is small steps, but hopefully shows that we are, and I am determined to make a difference. Our organisation is far too important to too many people, including us, to see it suffer. I was born in Norfolk, and I grew up in Norfolk and have worked in Essex for most of my career and I know the really vital and important role that we play and so it’s a really exiting opportunity for us to continue the journey of improvement that we have already started, hopefully accelerate that journey, are really be able to make EEAST an organisation that we’re all really, really proud to work for, that we can celebrate our successes, and we can have frank and open conversations when we don’t get things right, and make them right.

The last thing which I’ve also been asked a number of times is around restructures within the organisation. Obviously, with a new Chief Executive coming in, there’s always a fear that there’s going to be a new broom syndrome. The thing I can say hand on heart that there’s no intention at the moment of making any significant organisational structural changes to the ones that we’ve already got.

The thing we are, I am looking at is making sure that firstly that managers are appropriately supported as I said earlier today, and also making sure that we have enough resource within all of our corporate service departments, which are so critical in terms of helping us to deliver the care that we need to or want to on a day to day basis, because if we don’t get some of those back office functions and those corporate functions working effectively, clearly then we’re really going to struggle to deliver the level of care that we really want to for our patients.  

This is only the first of a number of briefings that I’ll be doing with you. I’m very keen to get your thoughts and views so if you do have any questions please do type them in now. It would be good to get your views on what is working well, what is working less well, what are some of the burning issues and the concerns that you might have as I start and as we continue this journey that we are on together in terms of improvement.

Ok, well if there isn’t any questions I hope this was a useful session for you. If there is anything that you didn’t want to type into the chat box that you’d like to ask then do feel free to email the OCE EEAST email address and we can have a look at those and respond to those questions directly, and I look forward to seeing you at another one of these sessions in the near future.

Thank you very much.

Published 9th August 2021