children - West London Mental Health NHS Trust

RIO V5
top tips
With the implementation of the new version of RiO next
month here is a checklist for staff and managers who use RiO:
Trust restructure
A personal perspective by Kelvin Cheatle,
executive director for workforce and environment.
1. Have you got a smartcard?
2. Do you know your passcode number for your smartcard?
3. Have you been trained on RiO V5?
4. Do you know who your champion user is?
5. Do you know only your manager/sponsor can change your
passcode on your smartcard if you forget it?
6. Have you made sure all your information has been entered on RiO
before cut-over on the 20 January?
7. Do you have your data capture sheets ready for cut-over?
8. If you are a manager/sponsor, have you been booked onto your
passcode changing training yet?
9. Do you have your “Best Practice Guide” for your smartcard and
know your responsibilities?
Retrospective CRBs
Since January 2004 new employees
to the trust and those moving
posts within the trust have had an
enhanced Criminal Record Bureau
(CRB) check as part of their preemployment
clearance.
Last year it was agreed by the
executive team that retrospective
CRB checks will be undertaken for
all employees that were already in
post in 2004 and have not moved
jobs internally since then.
In recent months these checks have
been done for staff based at the
Cassel, within London forensic, the
Ealing and Hounslow SDUs. This
means that checks are now due on
some staff from Hammersmith &
Fulham, Broadmoor Hospital and
corporate services.
Staff will meet with a member of
the recruitment team to complete
the CRB form and provide
acceptable ID documentation. The
completed form will be sent to the
CRB. The results of the disclosure
will then be returned to both the
member of staff and the Trust.
If a disclosure is returned with an
offence listed, a representative from
the HR Department and the line
manager will meet with the member
of staff to consider the case using
the following criteria and decide
whether further action is required:
• The nature / seriousness of the
offence and its relevance to
the safety of patients, staff and
property.
• The length of time since the
offence occurred.
For all the latest news on
RiO select the “service
developments” tab on the
front page of the Exchange.
Queries to the smartcard
team on 07890 208 818.
• Whether the offence was an
isolated incident or part of a
pattern of offending behaviour.
• Whether the applicant’s
circumstances have changed
since the offence was
committed.
• Any relevant information offered
by the individual about the
circumstances surrounding the
offence being committed.
• Whether the offence has been
previously disclosed.
This is a mandatory
exercise; if you have any
queries about this please
contact Sandra Gondo,
head of staff solutions, or
your HR Consultant.
Back in the 1980s, when I was
studying for a career in HR (it was so
long ago it was then called personnel
and training!) the management guru
of the day was Charles Handy. He
wrote books such as “Understanding
Organisations” and the “Empty
Raincoat” in which he talked about
the need for organisations to adopt
structures that suited their business
needs and adapt them as they went
along. He was very critical of structural
change for the sake of it and saw it
as a sign of organisational weakness
as it usually created instability and
confusion.
Change has become a way of life for
those of us who work in the NHS
and the NHS itself has been through
more reorganisations than England
has football managers. Although there
are changes all around us the trust
itself has actually had a remarkably
stable configuration by modern
standards for an extended period.
In 2000, when the merger between
Broadmoor Hospital Authority and
Ealing Hammersmith and Fulham Trust
was being put together, the forensic
and local services divisional structure
was designed and implemented when
the West London Mental Health
Trust was created in April 2001. That
structure lasted until 1 October 2008
when the new five service delivery
units were created; seven years of
organisational stability by modern
standards is quite a long time and
indeed, the trust’s current portfolio
of services, has remained largely
unchanged since the Hounslow Adult
Mental Health Services became part
of the organisation in April 2002.
So whilst we can all be forgiven for
thinking that structure is changing
every year, we have had a remarkably
stable period.
However, the creation of the five
service delivery units is a significant
shift in the way the organisation
runs. So, have we been guilty of what
Charles Handy called reshuffling of
the deck chairs, or have we sensibly
adapted the trust structure to reflect
the world we are now living in? Well
I like to think that we have taken
Charles Handy’s advice and sensibly
adapted the structure. There are
a number of compelling reasons
to do away with the old local and
forensic divisions. Firstly, they no
longer reflect the way money flows
into the organisation or the clinical
pathways through which our patients
proceed. It makes much more sense
to organise our services around the
way they are commissioned by PCTs
and other commissioning groups (as
in the case for the London forensic
and Broadmoor services) and the
geography or patch which our
services are serving (which of course
has always been the model for Ealing,
Hounslow and Hammersmith and
Fulham). The new arrangements not
only support the way the money
and the patients services flow, but
also our relationships with PCTs, local
authorities and other partners, around
those localities.
...............................................
the creation of the five
service delivery units is a
significant shift in the way
the organisation runs
...............................................
No change is without pain of course
and creating a universal model, where
older people services, CAMHS and
adults services sit side-by-side, in the
three London boroughs, has created
concerns for staff that their services
will lose their identity and focus in the
new SDU world.
To deal with those of course
necessarily means we have to become
quite creative in the structures that
exist below the SDU director level,
to make sure those services have
the right clinical representation and
management arrangements, to
ensure that they not only survive but
thrive in the new regime. It is equally
important that services like the Cassel
Hospital and the gender identity
services in Hammersmith also obtain
a high profile, as they are national
services, highly valued and respected
way beyond the boundaries of West
London Mental Health Trust.
The concept around the creation of
West London Mental Health Trust
in 2000 was that it became a large
speciality mental health trust that
provided the whole spectrum of
mental health services, across a broad
catchment area and a personal view
is that the creation of the five SDUs
is a better way of both protecting
the identities of all those services, but
making sure that they can navigate the
complex world around us successfully
in the years to come.
The board will be undertaking a full
evaluation of the structural changes
later this year to ensure that the
desired outcomes have been achieved.
10 MENTALHEALTHMATTERS MENTALHEALTHMATTERS 11