NHS Forth Valley Assurance Board minutes: 10 July 2024

Attendees and apologies

Members

• Christine McLaughlin, Co-Director of Population Health (Chair)
• Fiona Hogg, Chief People Officer
• Laurie Whyte, Head of Board Governance and Appointments Team (on behalf of Robert Kirkwood) (on Teams)

Attendees – NHS Forth Valley 

• Neena Mahal, Chair (Interim) 
• Amanda Croft, Chief Executive (Interim)
• Kevin Reith, HR Director (Interim)
• Jo Tolland, Programme Director, Culture Change and Compassionate Leadership

Apologies

• Angie Wood, Co-Director, Social Care and NCS Development Directorate 
• Robert Kirkwood, Head of the Office of Chief Executive NHS Scotland

Items and actions

Welcome and apologies

The Chair of the Assurance Board (AB) welcomed colleagues to the twentieth meeting of the AB and outlined the agenda. Attendees and apologies were noted for the minute.

The Chair noted that this was a special meeting of theAB to focus specifically on the culture change and compassionate leadership programme and invited Fiona Hogg, Chief People Officer to introduce the item.

Fiona Hogg gave a general overview of the new Scottish Government improving wellbeing and working cultures (IWWC) document published on 9 July 2024, and the intention to develop a guide that will complement existing initiatives already in place and reflect existing good practice. She indicated that it would be a good opportunity for NHS Forth Valley to share the work of the culture change and compassionate leadership programme and how it fits into work being taken forward at national level.

Culture change and compassionate leadership programme

Kevin Reith, HR Director (Interim) introduced the paper that had been shared with colleagues in advance of the meeting, before passing over to Jo Tolland, Programme Director for the culture change and compassionate leadership programme, who then gave a presentation on the work that has been completed to date. 

Key points

• the culture change and compassionate leadership was launched in early 2023 and since that time, three key phases have now been completed, data gathering (staff feedback and organisational data), data synthesis (identification of key themes) and design
• there has been extensive staff engagement in the programme, with over 1200 colleagues engaged with data gathering/feedback process and 800 colleagues attended a presentation and discussion of the programme findings. A further 294 colleagues participated in workshops which were held throughout April, May, and early June 2024 as part of the design phase, which concluded at the end of June 2024
• staff feedback has been positive with colleagues having reported their appreciation of the opportunity to speak out and be involved in the development and prioritisation of solutions to the issues they provided feedback on at the start of the programme
• a programme board is now formally in place to oversee the programme and activity is being monitored through a highlight reporting process. The programme board reports to the staff governance committee and area partnership forum
• monthly strategic risk review meetings have been in place since July 2023
• programme board continuing to review and direct work to target communication to staff groups which may have been missed and to encourage ongoing participation. 

The Chair thanked colleagues for the presentation and asked they now consider how to convey what is different now, and how things have improved since the board was escalated in November 2022. She asked colleagues to ensure that the findings of the programme resonate with staff across the whole organisation, including those from health and social care partnerships.

Colleagues were asked to consider what learning could be shared more widely with other boards. Amanda Croft agreed to prepare a report providing a comparison of what leadership, culture and governance was like pre-escalation and what is like now. 

 AOB/prep for next meeting

The next meeting of the AB will be on 5 September 2024.

The AB Chair thanked colleagues for their contributions and closed the meeting.