AH ANNUAL REPORT 2018

A MESSAGE FROM OUR
CHAIR AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE
2017/18 marked another eventful and successful
year for Alder Hey. For us, it has been an honour and
a privilege to lead such an outstanding organisation
and marvel at the many achievements of our
incredible staff.
Thanks to the perseverance, dedication and hard
work of our clinical and corporate teams, we again
delivered a remarkable set of year-end results.
This included meeting all nationally mandated
standards and targets, as well as hitting our financial
control total ahead of plan and thereby attracting
additional funding to the Trust from our regulator
NHS Improvement. Yet these achievements,
although remarkable in the context of an NHS which
continues to face unprecedented levels of financial
pressure and challenge from increasing demand,
are eclipsed by the day to day examples of our staff
going the extra mile to provide the very best care to
our children and young people. We are immensely
proud of the way in which staff live the Trust’s values
in all that they do, every day.
We were greatly encouraged by the positive results
of this year’s staff survey and this gives us much to
build upon in the next 12 months, supported by our
highly successful ‘Listening into Action’ initiative. A
key focus for the Board has been to progress our
Quality Improvement programme which lies at the
centre of our Quality Strategy; we have seen the
enthusiasm with which this is being embraced by
the whole organisation through a myriad of quality
initiatives – many of which are described in the
Quality Report on page 81 of this document. We
have seen measurable improvement across a range
of our quality metrics, notably no avoidable factors
found by the mortality reviews undertaken for all
deaths in hospital; a further significant reduction in
medication errors, bringing the total reduction since
in the last three years to 75%; and a 46% reduction
in the number of hospital acquired infections
since 2014/15. The new style Quality Assurance
Rounds which we introduced in September have
been warmly welcomed by everyone who has
been involved so far, as the process enables a real
connection between Board members and the host
team – the idea of ‘ward to board’ brought to life –
which has been of huge value to us all.
Alder Hey received two inspections by the Care
Quality Commission during the year – in April 2017
and again in February 2018. On both occasions
inspectors commented on the compassionate,
child-focused care given by everyone they met
and we continue to be rated as ‘outstanding’ in the
Caring domain of the CQC’s fundamental standards.
It remains our intention to provide outstanding care
for all our patients across every domain and our
ambition to achieve that rating for the whole Trust.
As further testament to the regard in which
Alder Hey is held, the Board was asked by NHS
Improvement in May of 2017 to take on the
management of Liverpool Community Health NHS
Trust for a period of six months, whilst the final
arrangements could be made for transition of its
services to another provider. The Board was happy
to lend its support to the excellent staff at LCH at
a difficult time, as well as taking the opportunity to
assist the local health system in the spirit of collegial
working and shared goals across the service for the
benefit of the local community.
Again, we could not have taken on this additional
role without complete confidence that our Alder
Hey family was behind us, keeping the organisation
running as smoothly as ever; the fact that this was
the case is evident in the report that follows. It only
remains for us to reiterate our enormous gratitude to
the whole team for their unfaltering commitment.
David Henshaw
SIR DAVID HENSHAW
Chairman
Louise Shepherd
LOUISE SHEPHERD CBE
Chief Executive
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust 6
Annual Report & Accounts 2017/18