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The focus of the day will be our Strategic Framework which supports us to deliver our vision and values. The framework sets out clear objectives to support ‘outstanding care delivered by outstanding people’ and links to our values of caring, safe and excellent. We will also be discussing the financial challenges faced by the NHS and what this means for us locally.

As we have strong links with the University of Oxford via their Department of Psychiatry and a good background in research and development, there will also be a presentation on the Research and Development can play in supporting our future.

I am looking forward to meeting staff from across the Trust tomorrow and hope they all have an interesting and inspiring day.

Once a year I invite staff to submit applications/ nominations for the Chief Executive’s Innovation Award. This provides a further opportunity for projects and pieces of work to be submitted for recognition and support to enable them to be rolled out more widely across the organisation. This year we received 17 applications for the award and the judges have shortlisted six projects.

 The six shortlisted projects are:

The PATHS project that is taking place at Luther Street Medical Centre in Oxford. PATHS stands for ‘Promoting Access to Health Services’ and is a volunteer based project that matches volunteers with homeless patients who may need extra support to access services. More than 10 volunteers have been trained and are supporting patients.

‘Living with Bipolar Disorder’ is an evidence-based support programme established for service users who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The programme title emphasises the focus on recovery; seeing bipolar disorder as a long-term condition that can be managed successfully given the right tools and information. Two Community Mental Health Teams in Buckinghamshire have established this programme.

The Children’s Community Physiotherapy Service in Oxfordshire has established constraint induced movement therapy groups for children with Hemiplegia. This started as a pilot and the groups are already running county wide throughout the year and are constantly being reviewed to ensure they take on board feedback from children and families.

The Oxfordshire Falls Service has been working on a pilot to review referrals from the ambulance service and has been working with local partners to improve the referral rates. The pilot has already seen a reduction in acute hospital admissions and meant more people can be cared for closer to home or in their own homes which we know is important for our patients.

Our City Central Community Mental Health Team in Oxford is piloting a new approach to assessment clinics in order to provide an integrated approach to assessments involving patients, carers and clinicians. This supports improved outcomes for patients.

The Kick the Habit project has been established to support mental health service users to give up smoking and has provided a different approach to this in order to improve quit rates. A manual has been developed that can be shared across services and Kick the Habit groups have been set up in the wards.

As you can see, a diverse range of projects have been shortlisted and they have each been invited to present to a panel of judges who can ask more in depth questions about their work. The winner will be announced in July at our celebration event so I look forward to letting you know who wins.

Congratulations to everyone who was shortlisted.

 The theme for the week nationally as set out by the Mental Health Foundation is ‘Doing Good Does You Good’. In Buckinghamshire we are involved in the Healthy Communities Partnership who have launched the Five Ways to Wellbeing campaign across the county. One of the five elements of this campaign relates to giving your time or support to someone else in order to help your own wellbeing. You can find out more at www.buckinghamshire.nhs.uk/healthy-lives/healthy-mind/5-ways-to-wellbeing/ Oxfordshire Mind are also running a Five Ways to Wellbeing campaign and you can access information about their road shows this week via www.oxfordshire-mind.org.uk/news-events/roadshow

 Today our Patient Advice and Liaison team has a stand at a supermarket in Aylesbury promoting the Trust and our services. We have also been promoting our Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services and the work that is happening in Oxfordshire at the moment to share skills between physical health and mental health nurses to support patients with their physical and mental wellbeing.

 Take a look at our news pages and our social networking sites to find out more about what is going on this week. If you want to know more about Mental Health Awareness Week nationally visit www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/mentalhealthawarenessweek/

The event was well attended and it was great to talk with the A12 members who have been involved in the development of the service including recruitment and training. I am looking forward to watching the film they are currently making about improving access to psychological therapies for children and young people.

While I was at the launch event, our Communications team was holding the first of our Health Matters talks at Science Oxford. Dr Ferris from our Forensic Services delivered a talk on reducing violence in mental health to over 40 members of the public. The feedback we have received has been positive and I hear the Q&A session prompted some lively debate. Keep checking our website and social networking pages for more information about our series of Health Matters events.

Finally, Tuesday evening was also host to a Governor Seminar where my Executive Director colleagues briefed our Governors on our annual planning arrangements and asked them for feedback and views.

After such a busy start to the week I hope we all have a restful weekend.

The Kick the Habit manual was developed on one of our wards to support a smoking cessation group. This is now being rolled out across the Trust and Kick the Habit groups are popping up in lots of areas.

Our staff are also encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles and today we have launched a short survey to find out how we can support our staff to stop smoking.

Smoking causes 106,000 deaths each year in the UK, which is about 13 deaths an hour. Smoking is the biggest avoidable cause of deaths, hospital admissions and GP consultations. Smokers are 4 times more likely to quit successfully if they use their local NHS Stop Smoking Service, which will give them advice, support and access to stop smoking medication on prescription.

If you would like to access NHS support to quit visit:
www.smokefreeoxfordshire.nhs.uk - Oxfordshire
www.smokescape.org – Buckinghamshire

We have a strong commitment to providing integrated care, whether this is within our own Trust or with other NHS and social care partners. We want our patients to receive high quality care wherever they are on their patient journey. We recognise the need to build on the relationships we already have with our local GPs and our other partners in care. I would be interested to hear your views about how we can work more effectively to improve this.

Success in delivering the highest quality care and meeting our values of caring, safe and excellent is down to our staff members and the relationships they have with our patients, our GPs and our other partners.

We have worked in partnership with YoungDementia UK on projects in the past and are pleased that their hard work to support people with young onset dementia and their families has been recognised. Well done to Tessa and the team.

To find out more visit www.youngdementiauk.org

We have also asked our Members what they would like from us to support them to be more engaged. If you have views please complete our survey via http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z2XXDYK

Even if you are not a Member of our Trust we would love to know what sort of things you would like to get involved in and also the reasons why you may not choose to become a Member. Again, if you are interested in feeding back, use the link above.

I look forward to finding out what more we can do as a Trust to engage you!

Don’t forget your local pharmacist is on hand to provide advice on treating minor ailments like coughs and colds, or long term conditions such as asthma and diabetes. Your pharmacy can also provide you with advice and tips on keeping healthy, including advice on stopping smoking, how to eat healthily and how to get enough exercise.

Remember, A&E departments are for life-threatening and emergency conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems and serious accidents. We need to make sure that A&E services are free to help the people who really need them.

You can always visit our website for information on what to do out of hours if you need to contact us  http://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/  The contact information is on the home page.