volunteering roles, and support volunteers to make progress towards their goals. We currently have five volunteer roles available and a wide range of volunteers in these roles including those looking to develop new skills, meet new people or give something back to the community. What we did During 2016/17 our volunteering programme has grown through our recruitment of more volunteers to both new and existing roles. For example, our Exercise Buddy role has been extended to the North and Inner City and East areas; we have new volunteers in post and will continue to develop the role based on feedback from the volunteers. We have had a lot of interest in our Care Plan Buddy role, particularly in the newly established Therapy Care Plan Buddy role, which has attracted several students who want to complement their studies in physiotherapy or occupational therapy. We have expanded our Welcome Volunteer role to the Walk In Centre, and have volunteers in place there helping to get more feedback about the service we provide. The Macmillan Volunteering position continues to be successful, with the volunteer currently in post receiving the ‘Outstanding Moments of Care’ award at our annual staff awards event. We will be developing our volunteering programme further over 2017/18 through our new contract to provide ‘Community Navigators’ to the South, Central and East region of Bristol. This will involve recruiting several volunteers to help reduce isolation and loneliness in older people in Bristol. Priority 6: Optimising medicines management Good practice in managing medication is an important part of our patient safety programme. Every day we help significant numbers of people in the community to achieve management of their conditions through supporting them with medications, from helping people with insulin injections to prescribing for long term conditions and infections. Patients told us they wanted more information to be available to the general public and that they wanted to see better training on handling medicines safely. What we said we would do During 2016/17 we aimed to achieve a reduction in the inappropriate prescription of broad spectrum antibiotics through antibiotic stewardship; a reduction in missed medication doses immediately following hospital discharge through the use of a hospital drug chart by the out of hours clinical service; and a reduction of medicine-related incidents through an improvement in our availability of training resources. Antibiotic stewardship We said we would:
Priority four: patient leadership programme - Healthcare Change Makers What is the patient leadership programme? The patient leadership programme is a collaborative project between North Bristol NHS Trust, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, and Bristol Community Health to provide development sessions for a group of patients, designed and facilitated by the King’s Fund, to increase the understanding of patient leaders in the health and social care system and to further develop their leadership and influencing skills. These patients are called Healthcare Change Makers. Why is this a priority? Recent research, such as the Department of Health’s ‘Liberating the NHS: No decision about me, without me’ (2012), has shown the value of having a credible patient voice contributing to the decision-making process of health and social care planning across NHS service providers. Sustainable transformation plans (STPs) and other changes due to be implemented across NHS services over the next few years mandate the need for greater engagement with patients and service users. Therefore, the patient leadership programme participants – the Healthcare Change Makers – are in are in an excellent position to provide this viewpoint. Bristol Community Health supports the patient leadership programme to ensure the Healthcare Change Makers can effectively engage with and influence NHS decision makers. We hope this will ensure a credible patient voice is at the heart of planning how health and social care services are delivered in the Bristol area. Their input is not limited to STPs, but can be of benefit to a wide range of organisations and projects – from the very specific to wider, more overarching strategic policies. What we are hoping to achieve The Healthcare Change Makers are a real-life resource that can be accessed by all health and social care decision-making groups to discuss, influence, recommend, and scrutinise plans for delivering these services. This will create a better collaborative approach between different providers that benefits patients and their families and friends. We will ensure that every patient engagement opportunity is highlighted to the Healthcare Change Makers so they can collaborate with us. The programme is still developing so it is hard to pin down specific milestones as the breadth of work undertaken is defined to a large extent by the patient leaders, both individually and collectively. Support for this project will be offered by Bristol Community Health’s patient and public engagement lead’s attendance at forum events, and direct engagement with the Healthcare Change Makers – sharing knowledge, contacts, and the use of Bristol Community Health facilities where appropriate.
In 2016/17 we implemented an annual review of the quality/safety systems through the Bristol Community Health audit committee, members of which include our external and independent auditors. We carry out regular quality and safety visits for all our services – this involves Board members and senior managers meeting with frontline staff and patients/service users to ensure quality and safety is a priority for all our services. Bristol Community Health is a member of a number of local and national expert strategic groups focused on improving quality of care and patient safety. This includes the West of England Academic Health Science Network and the national Sign up to Safety campaign. We participate in annual audits with both Adult and Children Safeguarding Boards. We believe that transparency, an open culture and peer review, in addition to regulatory oversight, is critical to the quality and safety of our services. What other organisations say about us To be completed after consultation Statement from Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) To be completed after consultation 7. Appendix Safeguarding adults and children – full appendix Safeguarding adults Ensuring all our staff are supported to prevent, recognise, report and help address abuse continued to be a priority throughout 2016/2017. There are a number of different ways our staff have been safeguarding their patients, including: Being alert to the signs that abuse might be happening whenever they see patients and giving them information about safeguarding to help them protect themselves. Right from the start, listening to what their patient wants and feels about the harm that is happening to them and how they feel they want it to be resolved. Reporting quickly to make sure that what has given them concern can be shared with other professionals and put into a wider context. Contributing to Safeguarding Plans for their patients to ensure protective and enabling measures are put in place to help address abuse. Keeping up-to-date with wider learning about safeguarding. Bristol Community Health has a training plan in place to ensure our staff are supported to prevent, recognise, report and help address abuse. All our staff are required to attend level 1 safeguarding training and in 2016/17 we achieved our target of over 90% of staff attending within the first two months of joining the organisation. Our staff that have regular contact with patients have further training at level 2. In 2016, we also made sure