Young people in Kent with an eating disorder including anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder are set to receive rapid help as part of the launch of the new First episode Rapid Early Intervention for Eating Disorders service (FREED).

To improve our services for our users and their families, we have designed our NELFT Learning Disability strategy.

Congratulations to Satha Alaganandasundaram, one of our staff governors, who has won the first ever Volunteer of the Year award from the University of Essex. Satha has been part of #TeamNELFT for nearly 20 years, working in our finance department, we're sure you'll join us in congratulating him on this tremendous achievement! 

The Carer Confident benchmarking scheme assists employers to build a supportive and inclusive workplace for staff who are, or will become, carers and to make the most of the talents that carers can bring to the workplace.

We are thrilled to share the news that Mark Dale, Governor at NELFT, was one of 490 Platinum Champions that were selected from across the UK to receive one of the Platinum Champions Awards.

Psychologists at North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) and University College London (UCL) have developed a new framework to improve mental health inpatients’ psychological wellbeing through a range of “psychosocial” treatments, hoping to reduce the overreliance on medical treatments. 

Our volunteers at NELFT go above and beyond to help support us in delivering the best possible patient care. 

You may have heard about monkeypox in the news recently. But what is it, what are the symptoms and how can you access help and information?

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in our CQC Well-Led Inspection this week. I had the privilege, with Wellington Makala, our Chief Nurse and Executive Director for AHPs and Psychological Professions, of presenting to the CQC inspection team.

This month is LGBT Pride Month and I am delighted to see all of the activity being led by our LGBT+ Staff Network. Colleagues attended Canterbury Pride for the first time at the weekend and it looked like a brilliant day.

This week I’ll start by saying a huge thank you to all colleagues who worked over the long Bank Holiday weekend to ensure that our patients and their loved ones were well cared for, I really do appreciate it. I hope that if you did work you will plan to have some time off soon.

I am going to start this week by sharing some feedback from our Trust Board meeting that took place on Tuesday. We always begin each meeting with a patient journey as it really helps to ground us and it is so important for us to remember why we are all here.

Firstly, I would like to thank our Executive Medical Director, Dr Caroline Allum, for deputising for me last week while I was on leave. It was great to have a break (even if I was poorly for some of it) and switch off from work. As always, I will remind colleagues of how important it is to take time off and I hope you are all making plans to ensure you take some of your annual leave over the coming months.

Anna works as a Paramedic for NELFT with our Waltham Forest Rapid Response Team. No two days are the same for this busy team and the work is exhausting, but so rewarding. 

So that we can understand the role in more detail, Anna kindly agreed to put pen to paper and write about just one of her days as a busy Paramedic at NELFT. 

Read on...

What is it about the term “borderline personality disorder”? Glenn Close in the film Fatal Attraction, Winona Ryder in the film Girl Interrupted and Princess Diana. I’ve read that the two actresses portrayed a female with this diagnosis and I have read also that princess Diana was thought to have it because they were all highly emotional, unstable, manipulative and needy-not qualities we think to post about ourselves or advertise. But why? 

I would like to start this week by saying a huge thank you to colleagues who worked over the Bank Holiday weekend, whether that was working your usual shift or as part of our on call, out of hours response. I really appreciate the efforts you all make to ensure our patients and their loved ones are supported when they most need our care. I hope those of you who didn’t have to work over the weekend enjoyed the extra day off on Monday.