NHS GRAMPIAN
Minute of the Grampian Area Partnership Forum (GAPF)
held on Tuesday 22 March 2011at 2.00pm
in the Board Room, ARI
Present:
Gordon Stephen, Staff Side Chair/Employee Director (Chairperson)
Mike Adams, UCATT
Aimee Bevan, SOCAP (deputy for Deirdre McIntyre)
Craig Taylor, GMB (deputy forJim Clark)
Joe Collier, Clinical Nurse Manager
Sharon Duncan, Unite
Frances Dunne, Service Manager, Aberdeen City CHP (deputy for Heather McRae)
Alistair Grant, RCN
Laura Gray, Communications Director
Martin McKay, UNISON
Sandra-Dee Masson, BAOT
Anne Ross, Head of Performance and Quality
Clare Ruxton, Assistant Director of HR
Vincent Shields, Interim General Manager Acute
Pauline Strachan, Chief Operating Officer
Joan Anderson, Partnership Support Officer
In Attendance
Jenny Greener, Non-Executive Director
Lorraine Scott, Service Planning Lead - for Item 3
Alan Sharp, Assistant Director of Finance -for Item 6d
Ewan Robertson, Performance Director -for Item 6f
Paul Welford, Strategic Change Manager - for Item 9b
Item / Subject / Action1 / Apologies
Apologies were received fromRichard Carey, Chief Executive (no deputy),
John Brett, Head of Health and Safety, (no deputy), Heather McRae (Frances Dunne deputised), Kirsten Sawers, RCM (no deputy),Andrew Fowlie, General Manager, Moray (no deputy),Alan Gall, Director of Finance (Alan Sharp deputised), Gemma Barclay, SOR (no deputy), Shona McDougall, BDA (no deputy), Sandy Dustan, General Manager Aberdeenshire (no deputy), Ali Walker (no deputy available), Gary Mortimer, Interim Director of Facilities (no deputy available), Lynn Shand, CSP (no deputy), Mike Scott, Staff Governance Committee (no deputy available)
2 / Terms and Conditions Sub-Group Presentation
This item was withdrawn due to unforeseen circumstances.
3 / Improving the Public’s Health and Reducing Inequalities
Health and Care Framework
Lorraine Scott attended the meeting to outline progress with the Health and Care Framework. This Framework had been written with information gathered from a number of places including an event attended by 130 staff from a variety of areas including Partner agencies. It would be going to the NHS Grampian Board in April.
The Health and Care Framework will operate in a continually changing environment and this means that it is important to work closely with Local Authority Partners plus the third sector of support and voluntary agencies.
The next stage would be consultation of the action plan and GAPF would be involved in this. Staff were all encouraged to read this document and ensure it reflects what they feel the services should look like.
4 / Notes of Last Meetings held on 12 January 2011 and 16 February 2011
The minute of 12 January 2011 was approved.
The minute of 16 February 2011 was approved.
5 / Matters Arising
- Careers in Transition Update
- Full-Time Staff Side Release
The posts are funded from April to December 2011. It was hoped that the existing phase of SAW would be concluded by then. Managers have been informed that there is backfill funding available.
Existing SAW Reps may continue as before.
This initiative was in line with the draft Facilities Arrangements PIN Policy and Practice which had been circulated for the previous GAPF meeting.
A role profile is being prepared and the objectives of the postholders will be performance managed by the Employee Director.
All requests for a Partnership Representative for any group were to go through Joan Anderson.
Accommodation had not been agreed for the Reps to date and Frances Dunne thought she might have something suitable and agreed to liaise with Joan.
There was a query about how to engage with the medical and dental staff and it was agreed to discuss this issue further outwith the meeting.
6
* / Improving Efficiency, Productivity and Sustainability
a.Voluntary Severance Scheme (VS)
Clare Ruxton reported that 170 staff were contacted to ask if they wished to apply for VS and 71 responded, one withdrew their application and 7 were in patient facing roles and should not have been contacted. 63 were left. 27 applications were supported by their manager and did meet the payback period and 7 were supported by their manager but did not meet the payback period.
An extraordinary meeting of the remuneration committee finally approved the process and 28 staff were issued with compromise agreements which were to be returned by 25 March 2011. All staff who return a signed compromise agreement would exit the organisation by 22 April 2011. The average payback time for the 28 successful applicants was 1.4 years.
PricewaterhouseCoopers would undertake an audit of this VS process as they did for the previous one.
It was agreed that If a VS scheme was to be run againit would need to be similar to the first scheme where anyone could apply and if they were not supported they would receive a full explanation for this. All applications would have to be signed off by Staff Side in each Sector, both the supported and the unsupported.
It was also agreed that If another scheme was to be run it would be best to have it towards the end of the SAW process to ensure that staff were not disadvantaged because their manager had not yet identified them under SAW, but there required to be enough time to allow the process to be done without rushing.
b.Safe Affordable Workforce Update
Clare Ruxton explained that the third round of Challenge meetings would be complete at the end of the week. Local areas could now begin to move to implementation stage since the Organisational Change Policy Guidance Notes had been agreed.
The identified savings would be in the region of £10m with £4.5m identified in budgets for this financial year and the remainder next year.
All changed posts would have to go for job evaluation and there was a request for anyone who already had amended job descriptions to get them submitted to the job evaluation panel soon to avoid the rush later.
Managers should be involving staff in job descriptions and the SAW process to try and avoid grievances later.
Some external influences would affect SAW plans eg the band 4 nursing post as the training was not yet up and running yet.
c.NHS Financial Report inc 2011/12 Update
Alan Sharp reported that after 11 months of the year completed there was an assurance that the overspend would be cleared. There was always a struggle to spend capital monies in time but every effort was being made.
d.Financial Presentation by Alan Sharp
Alan Sharp gave a presentation on the Financial position 2011/12 (slides attached)
The capital legally committed for was on a few big projects eg the Emergency Care Centre which left only £7.9m for all other smaller capital projects eg IT and medical equipment.
Additional commitments including the Change Fund, abolition of prescription charges, cost pressures, pay including national insurance, drugs, waiting times, VAT, CNORIS, Energy etc made identifying savings difficult.
There was a plan to bridge the funding gap of £13.9m which was mainly from a full year of the effects of SAW. £1.2m was still to be identified.
The Senior Management Team approved the budget and it would go forward to NHS Grampian Board in April and then be rolled out to operational managers to implement.
e.Financial and General Reports from Sectors – General Managers
Vincent Shields reported that Acute had an underspend in month and it was hoped that this would continue. Acute had made a substantial amount of savings during the last year.
f.Efficiency and Productivity Programme Management Office (EPPMO)
No items.
g.Patient Management System (PMS)
Ewan Robertson updated the forum on the implementation of PMS. It was five weeks into implementation of PMS and he felt that things were beginning to turn a corner. Most of the back log at that time was because of the manual logging that was done when the system was not working and it was difficult to know how long this may take, maybe 5 to 6 weeks. Support was offered centrally but most teams wished to do their own to allow them to learn the system.
A swot team had been in place but was now stepping down and there had been floor walkers to help staff but there had not been enough of these.
The effort staff had put into getting this system up and running was acknowledged. The benefits would be seen once fully functioning in the reporting system.
7
* / Developing the Workforce and Empowering Staff
a.Public Holidays 2012 onwards
It was reiterated that the public holiday awarded for the royal wedding on 29 April 2011 was for this year only.
Dates and process for public holidays from 2012 onwards were agreed. These dates would be advertised at the appropriate time via Corporate Communications.
It was noted that medical and dental staff have two additional public holidays and these would be advertised in due course.
Staff working a long shift on a public holiday would be paid for all hours worked on the public holiday with the appropriate enhancement e.g. 12 hour shift. The time back accrued for working on the public holiday would not exceed 7.5 hours as we cannot allow an employee to exceed the maximum of public holiday hours i.e. 60 per year (8 public holidays x 7.5 hours) - this was accepted as an accurate record.
b.GAPF Away Day Event 24 March 2011
The GAPF Away Day was going ahead on 24 March at Woodend.
c.PIN Policies – Facilities and PDP
Comments were sought on these two PIN Policy and Practice consultation drafts by end of March. Everyone was encouraged to read them and submit comments.
d.Face to Face Sessions Update
Laura Gray presented the results of the face to face sessions held between senior managers and staff (slides attached).
The sessions had been successful and the evaluation forms gathered a lot of additional comments. Staff were asking for more informal sessions with Richard Carey or other senior managers just to sit down and chat.
Social networking was being investigated. There is a face book site at the moment but this is just a portal to the NHS Grampian Internet site.
e.Employee Relations Update per Sector to Monitor Trends
The Employee Relations figures were collected on a quarterly basis to look at trends, the next report would be due on 31 March 2011. It was too soon to be able to see trends.
f.Staff Governance Self Assessment Action Plan
The Staff Governance Self Assessment Action Plan was to be complete and submitted to the Scottish Government by the end of May. The format had changed from previous years on the request of the Scottish Government. The completed plan would be submitted to the Staff Governance Committee and GAPF in mid May for submission at the end of May.
It was suggested that a small group is used to go through the action plan rather than relying on the whole GAPF and this could be one of the GAPF sub-groups.
g.Staff Survey 2010
Staff Survey results had been received and gave an idea of progress that was being made towards the Staff Governance Standards.
The GAPF Away Day would be having a session on the Staff Survey results and then it would need to be discussed again at the forum. The GAPF Communications Sub-Group had taken the result forward in previous years and would discuss at their next meeting again. They would take on the role of communicating information to staff but could not undertake the analysis required of the results. Feedback would go separately to the Annual Review.
The results were split into two different reports, one comparing NHS Grampian with other Boards and the other comparing NHS Grampian 2010 with NHS Grampian 2008. The most important one was the comparison with ourselves.
It was important to ensure that staff receive communications on the results and work is done on areas of concern.
The Staff Survey results along with the face to face sessions begins to inform on staff views but more work will be required. / LG
CR/GS
8 / Involving Patients, Public, Staff and Partners Towards Mutuality
No Items
9 / Delivering Safe, Effective & Timely Care in the Right Place
a.AHP Review
Clare Ruxton reported that a workshop was planned for 4 May at 2pm for all AHP Managers and Staff Side Representatives. An invitation was extended to any of the forum members if they wished to attend. Names to be submitted to so that numbers can be counted for fire regulations.
Elinor Smith would chair the meeting and Pauline Strachan and Mark Sinclair would both attend.
A Staff Side meeting for AHP Representatives had been organised for 18 April and there was a request for any questions from this meeting to be submitted to Clare Ruxton prior to the 4 May meeting to ensure that all the answers were given then.
b.Continuous Service Improvement
Paul Welford attended the meeting to update the group on the Performance Report and the Maternity CSI.
All the projects are being managed to ensure they meet their goals and deliver against NHS Grampian targets. Some projects are being handed back to line managers as they are at the end of the CSI involvement eg procurement best value and orthopaedics.
The maternity review was ongoing following on from big improvement event last August. A new NHS Grampian Strategy had been developed with public consultation and approved at the Board. An option appraisal was ongoing and four of six workshops had been held to date. The purpose was to reconfigure to ensure a high quality, affordable and sustainable service. Once this work was complete it would be taken to the NHS Grampian Board for approval to go to public consultation.
10 / Any Other Competent Business
None.
11 / Communication to Organisation from GAPF
Communication would be looked at and undertaken appropriately.
12 / Date and Time of Next Meeting
Thursday 21 April 2011 2pm to 5pm Conference Room, Summerfield House
Email:
Telephone: (01224) 556372
NHS GRAMPIAN
Minute of the Grampian Area Partnership Forum
held on Thursday, 21 April 2011 at 2.00 pm
in the Conference Room, Summerfield House
Present:
Richard Carey, Chief Executive
Gordon Stephen, Employee Director
Mark Sinclair, Director of HR & Strategic Change
Clare Ruxton, Deputy Director of HR
Bill Boyes, Assistant Finance Manager
Pauline Strachan, Chief Operating Officer
Joe Collier, Clinical Nurse Manager
Mike Adams, UCATT
Sharon Duncan, Unite
Anne Ross, Head of Performance & Quality Improvement
Jim Clark, GMB
Martin Mckay, UNISON
Heather McRae,Senior Service Manager City CHP
Vincent Shields, Acting General Manager, Acute
Alistair Grant, RCN
Stewart Rogerson, Facilities
Rachael Little, SOCAP
Jenny Greener, Non-executive Director
Laura Gray, Director of Corporate Communications
Mike Scott, Non-Executive Director/Chair of Staff Governance Committee
Leanne Gardner, BDA
In Attendance:
Mary Innes - Minutes
Diane Annand, HR Team Leader – for Item 2
Hilary Peace, CSI - for item 3aii
Item / Subject / Action1. / Apologies
Apologies had been received from Gary Mortimer (Stewart Rogerson deputising), Alan Gall (Bill Boyes deputising), Sandra-Dee Masson (no deputy), Deirdre MacIntyre (Rachael Little deputising), Sandy Dustan, Philip Shipman (no deputy), Joan Anderson (Mary Innes minuting), Jane Starley (no deputy), Lynn Shand (no deputy), Kirsten Sawers (no deput)
2. / Terms and Conditions Sub-Group Presentation – Diane Annand