I organised a meeting with Southern Health bosses in Parliament to discuss the future of the trust.
Attending the meeting were interim Chairman Alan Yates and interim Chief Executive Julie Dawes, along with Hampshire MPs Caroline Dinenage, Maria Miller, Alan Mak, Mims Davies, George Hollingbery, Caroline Nokes and Damian Hinds.
During the meeting the interim bosses of the Trust outlined new plans to improve performance, which focused on the “Clinical Services Strategy”.
The strategy includes a four month review into clinical services, which began in October 2016. It is intended to understand how services should be configured to best meet the needs of local communities in the future. The aim of the new strategy is to establish how services need to change to be more effective for patients and the public. The “Clinical Strategy” will first identify how the services will be best delivered in the future and the second, will look at whether the current organisational arrangements need to change to support that clinical strategy. Bosses at Southern Health are hopeful that the new strategy will help to ease public concern.
At the meeting MPs were also able to raise issues on behalf of constituents, and get a general update on the performance of the Trust.
I am grateful to Alan Yates and Julie Dawes for coming to meet with us. It provided an important opportunity for Southern Health to report back to MPs about the future of the Trust, and how they plan on improving performance and restoring public confidence.
