Thank You Event 2020: Making Stuff Better - Highly Commended

Every year we celebrate our amazing staff and their achievements at our pop-up ceremony. This year to keep everyone as safe as possible the event will be held virtually - Board members will pop into video meetings to surprise colleagues and present them with a trophy to celebrate as they are shining examples of our magnificent staff behaviours.

We will be posting all the winners as we reveal them so keep a look out on our website and social media channels. 

Making Stuff Better Award - Highly Commended

During the COVID pandemic lockdown the HHIT was involved in discussions with the council, primary care, public health and third sector organisations about providing a COVID protect facility for people experiencing homelessness and who were extremely clinically vulnerable. The HHIT made the decision to staff a facility and lead on this and within a week moved into a hotel to support vulnerable people. The team changed their whole way of working and were supported by two amazing colleagues from the Sexual Health team; Danya and Jane. The team looked at what was happening nationally and used best practice advice from national charity Pathway to support their work. This work has since been recognised by city council leaders as ‘excellent practice’. 

They were nominated by Liz Keat, Clinical Head of Service for HHIT, Liz said: 

“While working from the hotel, the team cared for people’s health needs, but also took the opportunity to really get to know people, assess independent living skills and pass on vital information to the council for them to more successfully accommodate people. The team also facilitated services to treat people who had not had medical treatment for some time due to rough sleeping. An example of this was to offer wound care for leg ulcers, or reviews into long term condition services.” 

“The team was also able to collect valuable data and introduced the chaos index as an outcome measure; this information has since been shared with commissioners, public health and the council to inform best practice for future plans. The HHIT was able to find out what mattered to a person and team members were present in that person’s life whilst offering comfort, care, companionship and dignity. Essentially, the team saw a problem and how it was affecting our most vulnerable people in society and found a solution.”

Steph Lawrence, Executive Director of Nursing and Allied Health Professionals, and Ruth Burnett, Executive Medical Director popped into a Team meeting via Microsoft Teams to deliver the good news!

Speaking for the team Jane Braunholtz-Speight said: “Danya and I were redeployed and we had a great experience and loved being a part of this amazing team.”