Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 - Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

102 5. Our Governors and Members
Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust
Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13
Our Governors and Members
Council of Governors
The Council of Governors (CoG)
is an important part of the Trust’s
governance structure. Individual
Governors and the Council as a whole
have continued to add real value to the
Trust during the course of the year. As
a long-standing Foundation Trust, the
work of the Governors has evolved,
and continues to evolve over time. The
work undertaken by the Governors
themselves in shaping their own role
over the last few years has gone a long
way in enabling the Council to play an
important role, acting as both a critical
friend and a conduit of member views.
This increasing maturity as a collective
body is demonstrated best in the way
in which the CoG has become much
more central in conducting its own
affairs, ensuring that it is playing an
effective role and holding individual
Governors and Groups accountable.
In spending time on clarifying its
purpose and how the role will be put
into practice, the Trust’s Governors
have effectively done a great deal
to foreshadow the subsequent
clarification of the Governor's role
that has emerged through the Health
& Social Care Act 2012. This has put
the RD&E’s CoG in a good position
to continue its own development in
line with the new powers provided to
Governors in the new Act.
Governors themselves define their core
role as follows:
• Representing the interests
of the Members and partner
organisations in the local health
economy
• Holding the Board collectively to
account for the performance of
the Trust
• Feeding back information about
the Trust to constituencies and
stakeholder organisations.
As reported last year, to take forward
its key functions, the Governors
established three new task groups on:
a. Enhancing the effectiveness
of CoG
b. Patient Safety and Quality aligned
to the Engagement and Experience
Committee work programme
c. Member and Public Engagement.
These groups are responsible for
identified elements of the agreed
consolidated CoG business plan and
provide a Governor perspective on
key issues within the groups’ remit
(i.e. they do not undertake executive
functions that are the remit of the
Trust).
The groups have a convenor and a core
group but are open to any member of
CoG that wishes to participate. The
task groups’ convenors are the three
Governors who currently represent the
CoG on the Engagement & Experience
Committee providing an essential
link between the Trust’s governance
structure and the Governors. The
groups are accountable directly to
the Council of Governors and the
convenors report on progress and
outcomes to every CoG meeting.
The Governor’s Coordinating Group,
which comprises the Chairman, the
Lead Governor (and Deputy), the
convenors of the three task groups,
a staff governor representative and
FT secretariat staff, meets every two
months and focuses on coordinating
the work of the CoG and ensuring
that progress is being made against
the plan and facilitating co-operation
between the CoG and the Board of
Directors.
During 2012/13, these groups have
been busy implementing programmes
of work linked to Governors' key roles
and stated priorities.
The focus on implementation marks
a significant transition from a time
when Governors worked hard to better
understand the role and how they
could contribute, to a position now
in which the more inward-looking
processes have been replaced by much
greater clarity and a determination to
add value.
The following section sets out some
of the key highlights for each of these
groups over the year.