Maternity improvement plan: workforce, culture and leadership
We know that the culture of our team has a huge impact on the care we offer you.
We are committed to creating a warm and supportive team environment, where each one of our colleagues feels confident and able to achieve their full potential.
We have
- Brought new leaders into the service, including a new Divisional Clinical Director, and Divisional General Manager. We are also recruiting for a new Director of Midwifery.
- Held five ‘big conversation’ events, with further events planned, offering the team a chance to come together and make further suggestions about how we can improve. We use a confidential app for feedback during these events, so team members can speak up with total confidence.
- Set clear standards for behaviour within the team, including making it clear that we will not tolerate bullying or harassment of any kind.
- Included our HEART values in all our key workforce documentation, setting the tone for the way in which we work.
- Commissioned an independent company specialising in organisational development to work closely with the service.
- Reviewed and refreshed our risk and governance processes to make sure that they are working as effectively as possible and support good partnership working with our colleagues across the NHS.
- Launched a new training programme for the whole team which not only rigorously addresses key clinical safety issues but also generates a culture of working and training together
- Refreshed our audit programme to clearly examine whether our wider improvements are working as expected.
- Arranged for our maternity champions to meet each month with our Board champions for maternity.
- Reviewed our midwifery staffing levels and confirmed that we are currently in line with Birthrate Plus recommendations.
We will
- Introduce a dedicated and independent Freedom to Speak Up Champions for the maternity service to increase awareness and access to our six Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.
- Agree a behavioural framework that reflects our HEART values, in partnership with the whole team, as well as an accountability and assurance framework for and with our midwives.
- Complete a review of equality, diversity and inclusion within the service.
- Appoint a lead midwife for cultural diversity to support us in offering culturally appropriate care for the people who use our service, in line with upcoming national recommendations.
- Continue to review our midwifery staffing levels against Birthrate Plus recommendations, to make sure we are performing ongoing monitoring of this important aspect of the service.
- Work closely with partners such as Health Education England on further developing our training programmes and cultural activities.
- Develop a new career development strategy for the service
- Update our training and induction policy
- Review all our training to make sure that it represents best practice.
- Improve the pastoral support available to our junior doctors.