Gloucestershire Health and Care Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has released its new five-year strategy, which will cover the organisation’s aims from 2021-2026.
Centred around the theme of asking ‘what matters to you?’, the trust has pledged to put “people at the heart of our services” and focus on personalised care.
The wider mission is described as ‘Enabling People to Live the Best Life They Can’, while the vision is around ‘Working Together to Provide Outstanding Care’.
From Gloucestershire’s perspective, this will be developed around its four ‘strategic aims’, each with their own goals and objectives. These key areas are:
- High Quality Care – delivering safe, effective, accessible services through co-production and personalisation, developing a Quality Improvement approach and ‘robust’ quality assurance processes.
- Better Health – working in partnership with communities to improve health outcomes for those who are most disadvantaged through intervention and prevention, identifying and targeting inequalities, integrating services, population health management and health data.
- Great Place to Work – ensuring the wellbeing and health of the workforce, promoting flexible working, training and digital enablement and focusing on recruitment, retention and talent management.
- Sustainability – embracing the latest technology as an ‘ethical partner’ and demonstrating how the trust is reducing its carbon footprint, setting ‘clear and measurable targets’, being ‘Digital by Design’ and promoting local employment opportunities.
According to the trust, their “exciting journey” will also include: developing services around the needs of communities; using technology to improve access and choice in how patients receive care; improving buildings to make them more efficient and a better environment for patients and staff; promoting quality improvement and innovation; working towards university status; being environmentally proactive and working with communities to tackle the health impact of pollution and climate change.
In its first strategy as a new trust, it outlines the need for a population health management approach and shares case studies on the benefits of integrated care, the Rapid Response service to support those who are seriously unwell in their own homes, its co-produced self-management service, and the trust’s Peer Support Workers, who use their lived experiences to support others.
Also available to view are a selection of ‘strategic projects’ and service developments that the trust is undertaking, which stretch from liaison psychiatry services, community hospitals and community mental health transformation, through to sustainability plans.
Its values, the trust says, “define who we are, what we believe, how we will work and the way that we want our patients and service users to describe the experience they receive.” These encompass encouraging behaviours such as open communication, cooperation, speaking up to promote safety and quality, valuing individuality, showing appreciation, being open to feedback, and taking responsibility for actions.
On how it will deliver the strategy, the publication highlights seven ‘enabling’ areas of focus: quality, people, digital, estates, research and innovation, and best value resourcing.
The trust concludes that it recognises “things are increasingly challenging” and that it will “need to consider innovative approaches to continue to deliver high quality and sustainable services”, and concludes that it will review the strategy every year to ensure it “responds to any changes in the local or national context”.
To view the strategy in full, click here.
