It’s been another busy week here at NELFT and one that has been full of awareness days that colleagues have been celebrating and raising awareness of across the Trust. I have found it really informative seeing the Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) campaign led by Christopher Tuckett, our Associate Director of AHPs and the team, to mark National AHP Day that happened on Friday. It has been great to see so many of our AHPs showcased via this campaign and encouraging others to consider one of the many varied roles available to work with us as an AHP.

This week is National Work Life Week. At NELFT, we put initiatives in place, to ensure colleagues can balance work and home life. Our flexible working and agile working models enable staff to thrive. Coupled with our excellent training and development opportunities, our colleagues can progress their career, being supported every step of the way in their personal and work lives.

Apprenticeships are available within both clinical and non-clinical areas across NELFT. Some of the job roles we currently run apprenticeships in include Health Support Worker, Nursing Associate, Business Administrator, Assistant Accountant, Data Analyst, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapist and many more.

At NELFT we also support our current employees with continuing professional development opportunities where they can complete an apprenticeship in a topic that supports their current job role such as Team Leader, Senior Leader and Nursing Top Up.

On Tuesday we held our Trust Board meeting in public and as always, we started with a patient journey. Thank you to Sara Boorman and Dr Annie Cardinal from our Kent and Medway All Age Eating Disorders Service for attending and sharing the story of a 13 year old young person and her family.

This week I have the pleasure of deputising for Jacqui, while she takes some well-deserved leave. I am just back from annual leave myself and it has been lovely to come back to the buzz across the organisation about our CQC rating of Good. I would like to take this chance to thank you all for the work you do each day to support the delivery of the best care by the best people. I am looking forward to working on our improvement areas as we continue our journey towards outstanding.