We are pleased to announce the appointment of Eileen Taylor as the new joint Chair across East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) and North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT). The appointment was made by the Council of Governors for each Trust following a recruitment process involving both Trust Boards, Governors, service users and stakeholders. 

The Coping Through Football project was recently featured on the BBC World Service as part of the radio programme 'People Fixing the World'.

Working Well Essex, commissioned by Essex City Council provide workplaces in Essex with health and wellbeing support and offer the Working Well Accreditation to recognise an organisation’s commitment to health and wellbeing.

NELFT’s Havering Community Learning Disabilities Team (CLDT) have won the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) award under the category ‘Psychiatric Team of the Year: Intellectual Disability’. The award was presented at the annual conference yesterday (09 October).

On Thursday, 3^rd November 2022, the new Corringham and Stanford-le-Hope Integrated Health and Wellbeing Centre (IMWC) officially opened to the public. The launch of the new IMWC, delivered by NELFT, represents the first of four to be opened across the Thurrock region, designed to provide health and wellbeing support for the local community.

Julie Jaye Charles, NELFT’s Board Advisor and Lead in Co-Production & Advocacy, has been awarded a CBE for services to Equality, Intersectionality and People with Disabilities.

We’re delighted to announce NELFT has been awarded the status of Disability Confident Leader Level 3.

This is a recognition of the work we’ve been doing to ensure that all sections of NELFT are providing a fully inclusive service for people with a disability. More importantly though, it confirms that our strategies are on the right track.

The NELFT (London) Eating Disorder Service has joined two other Eating Disorder Services in the country in achieving full Quality Network for Community CAMHS accreditation from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

This week I want to thank colleagues across the Trust for all you are doing to support our patients and the delivery of safe services as I know we are feeling the pressures of winter, particularly as we work to support our acute trust colleagues and their busy emergency departments. I would like to assure you that we are working hard with our partners to look at how we can improve processes to reduce these pressures where possible.

I can hardly believe this is my first blog post of November and how quickly October has flown by.

The weeks seem to be flying by at the moment and I can hardly believe we are in the last week of October already. That means that our Black History Month celebrations are drawing to a close and as well as encouraging colleagues to attend sessions if you haven’t already, I would also like to thank everyone who has been involved in the organisation and promotion of the events. It has been good to see so much activity and to see people coming together across NELFT to celebrate as well as educate.

It’s been another busy week here at NELFT and one that has been full of awareness days that colleagues have been celebrating and raising awareness of across the Trust. I have found it really informative seeing the Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) campaign led by Christopher Tuckett, our Associate Director of AHPs and the team, to mark National AHP Day that happened on Friday. It has been great to see so many of our AHPs showcased via this campaign and encouraging others to consider one of the many varied roles available to work with us as an AHP.

This week is National Work Life Week. At NELFT, we put initiatives in place, to ensure colleagues can balance work and home life. Our flexible working and agile working models enable staff to thrive. Coupled with our excellent training and development opportunities, our colleagues can progress their career, being supported every step of the way in their personal and work lives.

Apprenticeships are available within both clinical and non-clinical areas across NELFT. Some of the job roles we currently run apprenticeships in include Health Support Worker, Nursing Associate, Business Administrator, Assistant Accountant, Data Analyst, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapist and many more.

At NELFT we also support our current employees with continuing professional development opportunities where they can complete an apprenticeship in a topic that supports their current job role such as Team Leader, Senior Leader and Nursing Top Up.

On Tuesday we held our Trust Board meeting in public and as always, we started with a patient journey. Thank you to Sara Boorman and Dr Annie Cardinal from our Kent and Medway All Age Eating Disorders Service for attending and sharing the story of a 13 year old young person and her family.

This week I have the pleasure of deputising for Jacqui, while she takes some well-deserved leave. I am just back from annual leave myself and it has been lovely to come back to the buzz across the organisation about our CQC rating of Good. I would like to take this chance to thank you all for the work you do each day to support the delivery of the best care by the best people. I am looking forward to working on our improvement areas as we continue our journey towards outstanding.