Agenda item

7.1

The Sub-Committee received an update on Sheffield Children’s Hospital Trust Quality Report.

7.2

Present for this item were Dr Jeff Perring (Medical Director, Sheffield Children’s Hospital) and Yvonne Millard (Chief Nurse, Sheffield Children’s Hospital).

7.3

Ms Millard noted that this had been an exciting journey with lots of change in the organisation over the last 12 months, and since the last report. Last year the Clinical Strategy was launched and the Quality Promise about to be launched, which played in a big part in the quality of the organisation. The three priorities had been chosen carefully after lots of engagement with children and young people, families and colleagues:

• Implement the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework to improve systems, processes and training for patient safety
• Reduce elective waiting times to achieve 65 weeks, whilst ensuring “well prepared” outpatients and surgical pathways
• A focus on ensuring outstanding experience at Sheffield Children’s through co-production of a vibrant involvement and engagement approach with children, young people, families, and communities.

7.4

Members made various comments and asked a number of questions, to which responses were provided as follows:-

-        As an anchor institution, Sheffield Children’s Hospital was committed in its clinical strategy to providing close care . Work with schools would form part of the programme, in particular providing health education, and hoped to employ local people in the programme.

-        Much work had been carried out on recruitment and retention strategy since the previous report. Sixty internationally trained nurses had been recruited so the nursing workforce gap was very small. New pathways of care had been adopted.

-        A close eye was being kept on all waiting lists, and work was ongoing to ensure that the correct services and resources were being put into each waiting list. Theatre utilisation was as high as possible to ensure maximum output was achieved. Partnership options across South Yorkshire were being looked at, as well as different ways of working, extending hours and working into weekends. It was hoped that all of these measures would have an impact. Active work had been carried out around the co-creation of communities, including some artificial intelligence to look at the areas and families most likely to not to attend appointments. Workstreams have been put in place and have brought ‘was not brought’ figures down by 50%.

-        The hospital was committed to having voices of their colleagues heard and had a very good relationship with staff and had manged to maintain staff in all services, delivering safe and quality care.

-        Another set of industrial action was planned within the next few weeks, and as patient safety would continue to come first, some elective work would be stepped down to cover urgent and emergency work. Industrial action did have an impact on throughput on theatre work.

-        There was a process to track every child that didn’t make their appointment or surgery and to ensure that these were rebooked in a timely way.

-        The health of wellbeing of staff of workforce was a high priority, and there was a ‘People Plan’ in place that underpinned this. Issues such as the pandemic and the cost of living had not only affected patients and their families, but also the staff looking after them. The results from the staff survey had reflected this commitment.

-        A question was raised regarding the ‘uptick’ of self-harm referrals requiring a biopsychosocial assessment and officers present agreed to investigate this and provided further detail.

-        The reasons for the increase in patient safety incidents were due to an increase in incidents involving complex mental health needs, and also due, over the last year or so, to promoting a positive reporting culture.

-        There was a statutory duty for the quality accounts of NHS Trusts to be scrutinised by the Local Authority, which was via this Committee. Such reports would not not automatically be referred to the Education, Children and Families Policy Committee, but could be done so if the Committee felt there was specific content that necessitated this.

-        In terms of progress on actively keeping child and adolescent mental health services waiting lists under constant review, it was confirmed that there had been a reduction in this over the last 12 months.

7.5

In summary

Acknowledged the work carried out in reducing the workforce gap and consider the longer term effects of workforce stability.

Acknowledged the use of new technologies to reduce waiting times

Acknowledged the engagement work done with schools and the intention to roll this out further

Self-harm feedback

Add context around the patient safety figures within the report

7.6

RESOLVED: That the Sub-Committee:

(a)  thanks Dr Jeff Perring and Yvonne Millard for their attendance at the meeting;

(b)  notes the content of the report; and

(c)   requests an update on self harm referrals and assessments, via email.