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Thank you to VCSE colleagues for helping to relieve NHS system pressures

Image shows Emma Rowse, Chief Executive Officer at Cornwall Voluntary Sector Forum. Cornwall VSF aims to support, connect and promote the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
Emma Rowse
16 January 2025
staff members with signs that read

The team at CHAOS working with Health and Care partners in supporting patients ‘Home for lunch’ on their day of discharge.

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to 2025 and what a start it has been to team working across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. We are so grateful that we have such great teams committed to working together and that, when our residents need us the most, you are willing and able to mobilise fast, innovate quickly and for some of you to even cancel leave and come into work.

Everyone who was working did go above and beyond and we have to remember that this isn’t just our clinical staff it includes our cleaners, porters, voluntary sector colleagues and the St John’s ambulance.

So you are all fab! Thank you.

We would like to pick out a few services for special mention.

Kernow Health CIC’s operational management team stepped up and worked additional hours, with frontline teams also increasing capacity to manage significant pressures across the service. This ensured the single point of access (SPoA), as well as all our urgent community services and 111, continued to run at full capacity. In doing so, the service maintained their patient-centred focus and provided safe, effective alternatives to admission.

In our VCSE sector

  • Extra provision was made available for alternatives to admission and discharges from our hospitals, with the team accepting 24 more referrals in addition to the usual expectation of 20 people per week.
  • The Community Gateway service was open 8am-8pm throughout the Christmas and New Year period, including bank holidays.
  • Some Community Hubs were open on Christmas Day supporting the most vulnerable.
  • Contacts included connecting people with foodbanks, food larders and free social events offered across the county. This work reduced social isolation and food insecurity.

Cornwall Council adult social care staff worked flexibly and responsively to support the whole system whilst ensuring the best possible outcome for the residents they were supporting. This included supporting the prevention of admission and escalation of need in the community, part of the multi-agency response at the front door of the acute trust. There was also very targeted matching of care provision at the back door of acute and community bedded care provision. Community based reablement also significantly contributed to flow.

Our GP hubs increased their ‘on the day appointments ‘ and increased appointments to nearly 900 a week.

Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust cancelled targeted leave, so that the right people and services were able to avoid flow to RCHT and go into the hospital to identify people for virtual wards and SDECs and CATUs.

RCHT managed the epicentre of our critical incident. Increasing staffing numbers, focusing attention to the areas under most pressure and working with colleagues coming into hospital looking for ways to improve what we are already doing.

SWASFT colleagues worked collaboratively with our out-of-hours and SPoA provider, including our Specialist Paramedic colleagues, to respond to the rapidly changing scope of clinical pathways, to ensure our patients were provided with the right treatment as close to home as possible. We’re hugely grateful for all their efforts and for helping to reduce the pressure on ED. Thank you team SWASFT.

We are grateful to our on-call managers and on-call executives who worked across the out of hours, weekends and bank holidays to ensure an optimal response

We also provided support to the Devon system in particular University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust

We would also like to thank the system strategic control centre and the NHS provider incident control centres – invisible to most. These teams coordinated our response to the critical incident, mapped actions to outcomes so we knew where to focus more effort and mapping our efforts so that we can now review, look back and see what we can do to avoid more critical incidents

So, with all of that we think we should feel proud that coming together for our people has really made a difference.

Thank you. You are an amazing team,

Kate Shields, CEO, NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICB;
Steve Williamson, CEO, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust;
Debbie Richards, CEO, Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust;
Ali Bulman, Strategic Director – Care and Wellbeing, Cornwall Council;
Jan Randall, CEO, Kernow Health CIC;
Emma Rowse, CEO, Cornwall Voluntary Sector Forum;
Neil Lentern, Director of Paramedic Practice, South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust

  • SoS to Royal Cornwall

    letter from the Secretary of state

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