Agenda item

(Questions may be submitted to be answered by the Scrutiny Committee, or Council officers who are attending the meeting as witnesses, on any item that is within the scope of the Committee. Please see the procedure for the submission of questions at the end of this agenda.)

Question posed by Mary Dwyer:

We all know the efforts that our NHS staff have put in during the pandemic that we are still in. This has lasted for 19 months now. The toll this must have already taken on their personal life, mental health and family life is not imaginable let alone fully known. 

What plans have you made to alleviate the pressures on this body of people with winter pressures looming, as Covid numbers grow again and winter flu pressures rise? If plans are not already in place, please develop a plan now to show how we appreciate these marvellous people, many of whom are on a low wage, yet give their all for the good of others. 

As this was a question for the CCG to answer, it was agreed that it would reply in writing direct to Mrs Dwyer.

Response of the CCG:

To give assurance, across Derbyshire we work as a collaboration in health and social care, supporting all colleagues, with their mental/ emotional and physical health needs. As part of this collaboration, we have established a peer network of critical friends, with the aim of developing clear shared priorities and ambitions in order to meet the needs of the workforce we support. To do this, we have shared best practice, e.g. around the roll out of wellbeing champions, extending the network of peer to peer support across all partner organisations. We have also introduced wellbeing conversations, structured conversations, where individuals develop their own wellbeing plan and discuss its contents with their line manager as part of a structured conversation, to improve an individual’s health and wellbeing at work, this programme will over time be rolled out across all partners in health and social care. As well as this, the development of a Wellbeing Guardian model, a pivotal enabler in helping to create an organisational culture where empowering the health and wellbeing of our people is routine and a priority consideration across all organisational activities and decisions, these posts is typically held by a non-executive director.

We have received £600k in Mental Health and Wellbeing funding from NHSE/I to allow us to set up a mental health and wellbeing hub for colleagues. This includes rapid access support to mental health support delivered by IAPT services. This includes a range of therapeutic interventions including; CBT, Trauma Therapy’s and EMDR for example, with limited waits, allowing us to fast track health and social workers into treatment and support as early as possible taking a proactive stance to supporting workplace wellbeing.

We have invested in the recruitment of 5 Health Improvement Advisors to support the roll out of best practice across Derbyshire and to ensure equity across all organisations in terms of the offer with a view that all staff regardless their role or organisation should have access to the same level of support.

The Integrated Care System have also have supported the roll out of CiC an Employee Assistance Programme providing employee and family assistance 24/7/365 to all colleagues. The service provides specialist telephone and clinical support, with interventions provided in most languages, ensuring that local staff have access to high-quality professional help as well.

We have purchased access to Thrive, a mental health app, a clinically effective mental wellbeing tool for employees to build resilience against stress, anxiety, and depression. Alongside this we have developed a peer support model working in partnership with Professor Neil Greenberg and his team March on Stress to roll out a train the trainer model, across a range of courses, to offer a sustainable and long term solution to our workplace health and wellbeing solutions including; Trauma Risk Incident Management, Sustaining Resilience at Work, Reflective Practice to allow us to train colleagues to deliver training to their peers.

We successfully secured £50k funding for Inclusive Health and Wellbeing from NHSE/I, which was then match funded to allow us to develop and deliver a Long Covid programme across Derbyshire for health and social care staff across Derbyshire. The programme is led by an Occupational Health Physician and referrals are accepted from confirmed/ suspected cases with ongoing symptoms >4 weeks and can be referred by managers or staff themselves. In summary, all staff receive a wellbeing screening call - will include basic level physical health questions and sign posting as well as OT Triage: baseline assessment, desk clinic access/ referral to Long Covid community clinic MDT/ IMPACT+, 4 week ‘Coping with Covid’ psychoeducational programme, as well as mental health support programme and access to respiratory physio if required, as well as a comprehensive programme of clinical and peer support.

We successfully bid and received £87K for Primary Care Wellbeing again from NHSE/I and we are in the process of developing a model to replicate much of the work that has been undertaken in acute and community healthcare setting to roll this out in primary care. This funding is supporting the development of this and is currently in its infancy.

A working party has been developed for Violence and Aggression to commence in December. This team will develop and implement the new national violence prevention and reduction standard, which complements existing national and local health and safety legislation. Employers across Derbyshire have a general duty of care to protect staff from threats and violence at work. The standard delivers a risk-based framework that supports a safe and secure working environment for NHS staff, safeguarding them against abuse, aggression and violence and we are looking to take a collaborative approach to this.

We are about to launch of a collaborative programme to develop Menopause Friendly organisations across the Integrated Care System. This will commence in January. Putting diversity, inclusion and colleagues’ wellbeing centre stage will demonstrate dedication to making your organisations a great place to work. And menopause in the workplace support is a big part of this, with an increasing number of employers realising the mutual benefits it can bring. We want to support every employer across Derbyshire in their quest to become ‘menopause friendly’ with the support of Henpicked. Henpicked developed and run an accredited programme and we aspire that all organisations in our ICS will work towards this standard through 2022.

To support all the above and ensure consistency of offer and promotion of what is available, we are looking at recruiting ICS system specific roles to help develop our work programmes at pace. The good news is we have been informed that there will be a continuation of funding from NHSE/I up to 2023 to support the Health and Wellbeing of colleagues across the ICS.