Talking Point Spring 2015 ISSU

TALKING

POINT SPRING 2015

FEATURING

The official launch of the Three Borough Health Trainers service

PLUS

How recruitment is changing in our Learning Disability services

MEET THE TEAM: WHO’S WHO ON THE HR HELPLINE

Welcome

Welcome to your Spring edition of Talking Point!

The same goes for our more seasoned readers - your input and feedback is crucial in shaping future editions, so don’t be shy!

will see from the advert on our back page that we also have wellbeing services for colleagues who may need them.

Spring has finally sprung and we can start enjoying a little bit of sunshine and finally You will come to learn that we spend more are really keen to hear your ideas, time outdoors stories or share your photos and well those of us it would be great to hear your who hibernate thoughts and comments on our during the quarterly magazine. So please get winter can! in touch and if you would like to get This is why it’s into our next Summer edition, quite timely hurry up as we are that in this edition already starting we focus the spotlight to plan it on wellbeing - you can find out how now! we are building on our existing Wellbeing services in Earls Court with the launch of our new Health Trainers. A further example of 3 - Inspiring Possibility more integrated services can Catch up on all the news from around be found on page 6 with our TP Waltham Forest drop in sexual health clinic. You

On page 7 you can get to know our HR Helpline and put faces to the colleagues you might only ever speak to over the phone or by email.

Welcome to the Spring edition of your employee magazine, Talking Point, and a big welcome to our new readers from Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Peckham Rye.

Contents

You will remember in our last edition we launched the Inspired by Possibility Awards, we received a brilliant response from you and these nominations are now with our Chief Executive team for the difficult decision on who will be the winners. We will keep you updated on IRIS and will provide more information in our Summer edition.

Corinne Foley Employee Communications Manager

4 - In Focus

All the news from the launch of the Three Borough Health Trainers Service

6 - Learning from you Examples of best practice in LD and SM

7 - Meet the HR Helpline

WELLBEING FACTS & FIGURES From the Office for National Statistics National Wellbeing Survey, 2015

8- The Noticebaord

26.8% of people surveyed rated their life satisfaction as very high 2

18.3% of people surveyed showed some evidence of depression or of people surveyed anxiety rated their happiness as very high

32.6%

Inspiring Possibility

Measuring our Social Value

Social value is the additional economic, social and environmental benefit to communities we work in, above and beyond the delivery of our services.

You are probably only too aware of the added social value your service provides, but may be wondering why we need to measure it. Well, following the Social Value Act 2012, commissioners can now take into account the social value an organisation can bring to a contract and not just commission on cost alone. Questions about social value are becoming more frequent in tenders.

Now, while we had already been measuring it for some time, it’s clearly become more important for us to collate more robust information. So we established

a cross sector working group to track and measure under the four key themes of economy, wellbeing, community and environment.

Rob hosts Birchwood’s very own ‘Come Dine With Me’

This year we are focusing on the numbers of peer mentors and volunteers we have, showing how we work to involve the people we support in their community, ensuring strong social networks and showing how we contribute to developing the local economies in which we are commissioned to work.

Colleagues and service users were treated to a slap up meal at “Robev’s Restaurant” in Birchwood recently.

Each year we will aim to collect more detailed and robust data as our social value data collection measures and tools develop and improve.

The pop-up restaurant was created by service user Robert Gordon with help from Beverly Nield, Registered Mental Health Nurse.

If you would like to find out more about what we are doing to measure the social value of our work, you can get in touch with Gemma Bruce, Head of Community Development, at Gemma.Bruce@ turning-point.co.uk

Robert was really pleased with how everything turned out, he said he’d enjoyed planning the menu, shopping for ingredients, preparing the food and finally serving the meal to his guests. The diners also enjoyed the experience and scored Robert very highly!

INFO POINT

How we make a difference externally

You may have seen that ‘legal highs’ have been mentioned in the media a lot recently. Legal highs are drugs, which have not yet been made illegal, but which mimic the effects of illegal drugs, and can cause harm to those who use them. Some of Turning Point’s substance misuse services are in communities where legal highs cause particular problems, and colleagues have been working to raise awareness and offer support to those affected.

The External Affairs team have been supporting these efforts by creating opportunities for Turning Point to comment in the media – for example, in Wakefield, where colleagues have featured on local radio, as well as in newspaper interviews. Recently, Turning Point also held an All Party Parliamentary Group meeting on legal highs and mental health. This aimed to contribute to the development of effective and appropriate policy, and was attended by both parliamentarians and substance misuse workers.

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In Focus

Three Borough Health Trainers official launch in Earls Court

On Friday 27th March, Earls Court Health and Wellbeing Centre held the official launch of the Three Borough Health Trainers service. Chairs were put out and tea and coffee was laid on for those who had come to mark the occasion. By 10am the place was full and the first of the speakers, our Chief Executive Victor Adebowale, stood up to welcome everyone who had turned out. For Operations Manager Amy Stephenson, the occasion marked nearly three months since the service had first opened its doors. It had been almost five months of planning, recruiting, building links with partner organisations and raising awareness of the service in the community.

This has been no mean feat for Amy and the team- for a start it’s a new area for Turning Point. We’ve been delivering health and wellbeing services in Earls Court for just over three years now, and we also run a number of primary care services, but we are new to Health Trainers as such. Amy was keen to point out that it’s not a departure from our work, “Turning Point values are at the heart of what we are doing, it is very much a client led approach- the trainers work with people to make the changes that they have identified”. Health and wellbeing is an area we are becoming more involved in as we seek to provide integrated care to the people we support, not just addressing their individual symptoms. The recent addition of a Sexual Health drop-in clinic to our Waltham Forest service is another example of this (see page 6).

As part of the contract with our partner organisation, Living Well, we are delivering one of the largest Health Trainers service in the country. Taking on the contract, we 4

promised to expand the service and to reach more people. The great thing about this, Amy told us, was that the service has been able to benefit from the expertise of the existing Health Trainers whilst recruiting some fresh faces into the service. The new recruits have been undergoing training since March, a big part of which has been outreach work within the local community, speaking with local authority services and community organisations to forge links that will benefit their future clients. Amy explained the importance of recruiting local people with a good knowledge of the area- “it stands to benefit our clients, who find our Health Trainers more approachable and of course the Health Trainers are better able to signpost them to relevant services. Working like this we’re able to improve and address the needs of the whole person and their health.”

Looking ahead, Amy is keen to continue the outreach work the team have been undertaking, and in May most of the new recruits will start to deliver the service following successful completion of their training. “We want to continue on the path we have started out on. We know the service works - we just need more people to know about it.”

Pictured above from left to right- some of the Health Trainers and Health Checkers at the launch; Simon Jones from Living Well speaks while Councillor for Earl’s Court, Linda Wade and Ops Manager Amy (third from right) look on; Victor tweets a ‘selfie’ with Cllr Wade from the launch; Cllr Wade addresses the audience.

In Focus

Why I became a Health Trainer Melissa Thompson was one of the speakers at the launch event for the Health Trainers service. Having used the service herself, she went on to join as a Health Trainer.

How did you come across the service and what was your experience like?

Believe it or not, it all started with ice-cream! Basically, I started putting on weight and I didn’t feel good about it. My GP prescribed some weight loss medication but the side effects were awful! At my third month review I asked my GP if there was another way, a healthier way. She suggested I try speaking to a Health Trainer - and I haven’t looked back.

Spending time with my Health Trainer and having them listen to me, I realised that I needed to change my diet and I needed to exercise more. By my sixth session I had lost 10cm from my waist. I felt great! A while later, I mentioned to my Health Trainer that I would be interested in the role and by chance there was an upcoming vacancy. I applied, went to the interview and in 2009 I quit my job in retail and became a full time Health Trainer.

Why do you think it’s an important role?

For me it’s all about empowerment, equipping clients to make healthier lifestyle choices. I have continued to pursue a healthier lifestyle using the resources and information I give to our clients, so when I talk to people about how they can lose weight or do more exercise, I use myself as an example of how someone can change.

The second strength of the Health Trainer approach is that

we are really well embedded in the community. This helps to raise awareness of the service and also helps with signposting individuals to other local services for information, support and resources.

My goal is to support my clients to become their own Health Trainer The role is very much led by the client. That’s a key part of its success. We know that ‘health’ is different for everyone. It could be getting active, visiting your GP or maybe dealing with social isolation.

Whatever someone wants to achieve, we help them work towards that. I think that’s really important.

How has the service changed in the last few months?

Having the new starters come on board has been really good, we’ve all benefitted from some new thinking and being able to share our approaches. Practically speaking it has been good for the service too – we were a bit stretched before but now we can reach many more people. I was really pleased about Turning Point and Living Well’s involvement because they’re both organisations that are already rooted in the community, so we can refer clients to other TP and Living Well services in the area.

Personally speaking, I can also see the development opportunities for someone like me with this partnerhsip.

Quotes and comment from the Health Trainers launch in Earl’s Court Victor Adebowale, TP’s Chief Executive “Turning Point exists to support those who most need it, and to empower people to make positive changes in their lives.

The Health Trainer service gives us the opportunity to apply our wide experience in a new area, and help those most at risk of lifestyle-related diseases.”

Simon Jones, Director of Living Well “We are extremely pleased to be working in close partnership with Turning Point to deliver such an important service. Health Trainer services are an important addition to current services aimed at tackling health inequalities and our new three borough model will help support local residents to make healthier lifestyle choices.”

Cllr Vivienne Lukey Hammersmith & Fulham “No one knows more about their neighbourhood and its needs than local residents themselves.

We hope our new health trainers can improve the quality of life for all residents.”

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Learn from...

Sexual health clinic adds to support services in Waltham Forest Colleagues in Waltham Forest have recently extended the support available to service users. Team leader Jo Tanner explained, “I attended training with Safer London last year - the idea really came from there.”

The service held its first drop-in clinic in January. Working with representatives from the Come Correct Condom Distribution Scheme, Terence Higgins Trust and Barts Health NHS Trust, the clinic offers contraception and testing services as well as family planning advice. Jo told us she’s been really pleased with the attendance, which has been consistent since the first session. Importantly, two clients are now being treated for conditions that they did not know they had before attending the clinic.

Jo said “People getting support for substance misuse issues might not go and seek sexual health advice, or might not think that they need to.

It can be daunting to access a new service, especially during the early days of recovery, so it’s great that we can offer something like this somewhere familiar. It’s much easier for our service users to access.”

We’re sorry to say that we weren’t successful in our retender for the Waltham Forest service, but we are really keen to take the learning from our initiatives here and apply this in other areas.

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Recruitment in our Learning Disability services is changing Across our services, people we support are getting involved in the recruitment of the staff who will be supporting them.

Wilmer, who lives in Bedfordshire, recently shared his experience of being on the interview panel for Laurie, the new Regional Manager (RM) for Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, describing it as a ‘fun, brilliant, really nice experience.’

and ‘felt a bit nervous to start’ but was confident enough to take part without support from his Support Worker. He met Fiona, Andy and Elaine from HR, and chatted about what to expect before taking his place on the interview panel.

Wilmer was asked if he’d be on the interview panel alongside Fiona Ritchie (Managing Director) and Andy Callow (Director of Operations). Wilmer had already interviewed his support worker Jaine and said yes to interviewing for a new RM because ‘I like helping the staff and I feel happy to be involved because I like to get involved with things.’ Wilmer also ’wanted to ask a good question from the tenants.’

Wilmer said of the being involved with the recruitment process, ‘I’d definitely do it again and recommend it to other people as it’s important tenants get to have a voice.’ He said he also enjoyed it ‘because I got to know Fiona and Andy and they’re really nice’ and it was ‘good be part of recruiting the Regional Manager to look after the schemes.’

Wilmer spoke with the other tenants and staff where he lives about what to ask the candidates and decided to ask the question ‘how will you support staff to support tenants?’

Having looked through the information on all candidates, Wilmer arrived on interview day

Fiona Ritchie said “It is vital we support people who use services to be an active part in recruiting staff at every level. They see things from a different prospective and get to the heart of what is important to them.

Our processes would be weaker without them.”

Pictured above from left to right: Wilmer, Andy, Elaine and Fiona.

Getting to know you...

MEET THE TEAM

...on the HR Helpline They’re a team that handle more than 300 calls each and every week.

They answer at least 300 emails a week, process DBS renewals, support managers with absence management letters, advise employees - the list goes on... You probably knew about some of those things, but you might be surprised to learn that there are only three HR Assistants! We spoke to Team Leader Victoria Conquist to find out more.

What are some of the most common queries you get through the helpline?

Queries around pay and absence are quite common, in particular around pay day. We deal with a lot of quite similar calls and emails, but I think it’s the volume of work that might surprise some people. For a small team, we certainly get through a lot!

And what about times when you’re not on the phone?

We deal with contract variations, change of details, change of line manager, we also process leavers and deal with reference requests. That’s not to mention our involvement in TUPE, audits or our work around CQC... We believe that it’s important to be proactive about

the activities we see on the Helpline, we use the data we have to identify trends and escalate these with other members of the wider HR team, in order to improve and constantly develop our processes What makes you passionate about the work?

We all feel really strongly that we are part of Turning Point, we view everyone as our colleagues and likewise hope we’re viewed in the same way, we’re here to help as much as we can. I think I can speak for the team when I say that being on the Helpline gives you a really good insight into the organisation, and it’s satisfying when you can give someone the answers to their query, or help them out.

Do you ever get any strange requests through the helpline?

We get some funny ones from time to time –we have been referred to as the HR Hotline, which might give people the wrong idea... Also once someone within the organisation asked us, “What is the name of the organisation?” I’m sure there was a sensible reason behind it!

Look out for a new set of HR FAQs on IRIS soon, which the team have based on their collected data.

Introducing...

Anna, a HR Assistant is our South American explorer who enjoys practicing ‘aerial silks’ - “a performance in which an artist performs aerial acrobatics while hanging from a special fabric” thanks Wikipedia!

Faye, a HR Assistant is our ’30 days of good deeds’ initiator getting the HR team involved to do something little or big everyday.

Rebecca, a Senior HR Assistant is our shopping extraordinaire. She has the ability to pop out on her half hour lunch and return with two dresses and a handbag.

Hamzah, a HR Apprentice is our HR fashionista often styled in a chic blazer and stylish scarf. He enjoys playing football with other Central Support colleagues.

Victoria, Team Leader, will respond to you in Swedish if you speak the song-like language and bizarrely settled in Manchester following living in the Middle East, Australasia and Scandinavia.

And lastly, a big welcome to Pam Hartford, HR Ops Manager who joined the team only last week!

Pictured above from left to right: Anna, Faye, Hamzah, Victoria and Rebecca

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Noticeboard

Noticeboard

Just a thought EXPECT PROBLEMS AND EAT THEM FOR BREAKFAST Alfred A. Montapert

How to raise concerns at work We are committed to achieving the highest possible standards of service and ethical practices. We want you to raise genuine concerns safely, at an early stage and in the right way.

Please report any malpractice, illegal acts or omissions, so we can make the necessary improvements.

Announcements A warm welcome to all of our new colleagues in Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Peckham Rye, who joined TP on April 1st.

In Oxfordshire, the integrated service delivers a full range of interventions to support people with substance misuse issues from 4 full time hubs as well as other community bases and a roving recovery vehicle.

The Suffolk Recovery Network offers support to adults and young people affected by drug and alcohol misuse, working closely with local organisations to deliver interventions at three full time hubs and a number of part time satellite services.

In Peckham we’re providing supported accommodation to people with serious and enduring mental health problems.

Unfortunately we weren’t successful in our retender for the Waltham Forest service. We’d like to thank our colleagues for their fantastic work over the years.

Jay Stewart, Director of Operations, said “The sexual health clinic (page 6) is just one example of great innovation that has come from our services in Waltham Forest; one that we can learn from within our sector. Although we are all very saddened by the news of the services transferring, colleagues should be very proud of what they have achieved over the years. They are a real credit to the organisation.”

With your help we can deliver a safe service and protect the interests of service users and employees.

See below for our confidential ‘Raising concerns’ phone number.

You can find more information on our intranet, IRIS.

Useful Numbers ● Employee Care

0800 716 017 ● General Enquiries 0207 481 7600 (London) 0161 238 5100 (Manchester) ● Raising Concerns at Work 0845 888 1110

Have you heard of our Wellbeing service for Turning Point employees?

The service provides support to colleagues around work related issues, complementing our existing Employee Care and Occupational Health services.

If you feel you are suffering from stress or a stress related condition which you feel is affecting your general health or ability to work then you should speak to your manager.

All referrals must be made through your manager to the HR Helpline, but we are keen this happens before you might become unwell and might need to take time off work.

Talking Point is published online to save paper and money. Find out more about our

INFO For more information, search for POINT ‘rightsteps’ on IRIS. Turning Point is a registered charity No 234887