A culture of collaboration and teamwork across our forensic mental health services will be established with behaviours of all staff will be aligned with the agreed partnership commitments. The trust and empathy between services, teams and professionals will be further developed.
Leading by example, our senior team will highlighting our common values and challenges with every member of staff given opportunities to share experience and collaborate across the network.
What is happening now?
As the first step in progressing increased integration, working groups to deliver this programme of work will feature equal representation from all partners. Governance structures are being revised to ensure that principles of equal representation are lived within all organisations.
A clinical symposium programme with 4 annual CPD meetings is in development. Focused on case study-based learning and rapid improvement events, plus guest speakers from academic and national bodies. Teams from across the network are encouraged to join on a rotational basis recognising local service pressures play a part inf the ability to release all staff to participate.
What will come next?
Steps are being taken to ensure parity of commissioning and contractual terms for all members to support our climate of trust and fairness.
The tariff for day rates and financial penalties applied to organisations should be the same. We are, however, aware that there will always be some disparity in benefits allocation. This has been a formally agreed risk-gain share.
In the longer term
Looking ahead, we are developing interactive digital solutions to support real-time collaboration and relationship building across the collaborative. Adhering to information governance and patient confidentiality constraints, we will be facilitating cross-organisational communication, sharing our challenges and success in secure digital environments.
To better understand the barriers to collaboration, and to highlight the benefits in relation to improved patient care and staff morale, there will be ongoing engagement with teams. Should there be financial challenges to releasing staff to work across the provider collaborative, we will work with organisations to support with the costs of backfilling key clinical staff.