THE PIP UPDATE
A monthly update on the Perinatal Improvement Programme for staff
In this edition
Page 1
What is the Perinatal Improvement Programme?
Page 4
Latest Updates
Page 5
PIP shoutouts
Page 6
Fancy getting involved?
Page 7
Patient compliments
Driven by Progress, Focused on Excellence.
What is the Perinatal Improvement Programme?
You may have already heard of the Perinatal Improvement Programme (PIP) that is currently taking place across our maternity and neonatal departments.
Following the ‘inadequate’ CQC rating for our maternity services, it was clear that robust and meaningful action was needed to improve the safety, quality, and experience of care we provide. The PIP was developed to directly address these concerns by identifying key areas for change across the entire perinatal pathway. This plan is not only about improving outcomes for mothers/ birthing people, babies, and families—it’s also about creating a safer, more supportive working environment for our staff, with a strong focus on health, wellbeing, and professional development. Whilst difficult for all of us to acknowledge, the problems that led to our CQC rating were real, impacted women/birthing people and families, and are something none of us wish to repeat.
We have already made progress within the PIP to tackle challenges of the past and present, and to lift the service to achieve the ambitions of the Trust maternity strategy and national perinatal strategy.
By working together on these improvements, we can rebuild confidence in our services and deliver the high standards of care our community deserves. The PIP includes a number of colleagues who work within or across our
perinatal services. There are four workstreams focused on improving services for staff and patients. Each workstream has a lead and a Senior Responsible Officer (SRO).
1 Listening to our user voice
Workstream 1 lead is Tara Pauley (Head of Midwifery for the L&D) with Belinda Wood (Deputy Chief Nurse) as the SRO.
This workstream aims to:
• Ensure the voice of our service users informs the design and delivery of our services
• Reduce inequity in access and outcome outcomes for our population
• Collaborate with Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVPs)
2 Looking after our people and developing our teams
Workstream 2 lead is Karen Stow (Head of Nursing: Children’s Services) with Fiona MacDonald (Director of Culture and OD) as the SRO.
This workstream aims to:
• Develop a compassionate and inclusive culture
• Ensure all staff have high quality training and development
• Provide safe staffing levels
3 Embedding safety and quality
Workstream 3 lead is Cath Hudson (Head of Quality Improvement for Maternity) with Karen Sobey Hudson (Deputy Director of Quality and Safety Governance) as the SRO.
This workstream aims to:
• Strengthen governance frameworks that enables delivery of safe services and good risk management
• Ensures management of incidents are effective and compassionate
• Develop structures that promotes continuous quality improvement.
Would you like to be involved in the PIP? Email bhn-tr.pipteam@nhs.net to express your interest.
Cath Hudson
Karen Stow
Tara Pauley
4 Delivering exceptional patient care
Workstream 4 lead is Dushyanthy Jeyanesan (Obstetric Consultant) with the SRO role currently vacant.
This workstream aims to:
• Ensure we meet national standards and best practice guidance for our clinical services (for e.g. antenatal screening, transitional care)
• Strive for excellence and resiliency of our clinical pathways
• Work towards an estate and digital infrastructure that is fit for purpose.
We then have three highly experienced individuals who are leading the overall PIP Programme. They are here to support the Perinatal Service Leaders, work closely with staff, and drive the improvement and transformation work forward.
Val Wilson (Improvement Director) is an experienced leader and midwife, with experience of working with Boards and senior service leaders on complex clinical improvements, particularly in Maternity and Perinatal services. She has held leadership roles in high profile maternity improvements in; Morecambe Bay Hospitals, East Kent Hospitals, and Cwm Taf Morgannwg Health Board. Her approach is pragmatic, assessing services and processes from floor to board and developing improvement strategies whilst never compromising the ethos of ‘patients at the centre of everything we do.
Our very own, Dave Kirby (Consultant Lead), ED consultant and Deputy Medical Director. Known for his commitment to patient care and operational excellence, Dave is pivotal in supporting the Trust’s mission to deliver high-quality, compassionate, and innovative healthcare.
Steve Sewell (Programme Lead) is an experienced programme leader with expertise in complex transformation programmes, leading challenging programmes in places such as: St George’s Hospital, South London Partnership, Stockport Together NHS Vanguard, and Perinatal programmes in Alder Hey & Liverpool Women’s Hospitals, and Cwm Taf Morgannwg Health Board. He also works as a Senior Lecturer at University of Cumbria, helping to develop the next generation of project and programme leaders.
Would you like to be involved in the PIP? Email bhn-tr.pipteam@nhs.net to express your interest.
Val Wilson Dave Kirby
Steve Sewell
Dushyanthy Jeyanesan
PIP shoutouts
In each edition of this newsletter, the PIP team will give special shoutouts to individuals or teams who have helped the workstreams develop and/or implement improvements to the services we provide and/or the working lives of all colleagues across the perinatal pathways. In April we want to salute:
Jess Giblin, Community Midwife - received MNVP Staff Member of the Year award, for receiving the most positive feedback during the last year from service users.
Christine Crawford - for her dedication and insights shared during the walkabout at Flitwick community hub.
Sarah Gates, Bereavement Midwife at Bedford Hospital – For her incredible dedication and invaluable support she provides to bereaved families
Pauline Yamfam, Ward Manager at the L&D - who has independently devised an audit tool to look at delays in care and worked with IT team to have it digitalised.
Thank you all so much for your support!
Would you like to be involved in the PIP? Email bhn-tr.pipteam@nhs.net to express your interest.
Fancy getting involved?
Members of our workstreams continues to do ad-hoc walk-arounds to various perinatal departments and places themselves in staff areas to seek your views and tell you about the work of the programme.
We know lots of you feel very passionately about a number of the topics of focus within the PIP so we strongly encourage you to get involved. Your voice and insights are extremely important to this ongoing programme to improve our perinatal services, for both service users and staff.
There are different ways you can get involve:
• You could have a chat with workstream members on their walk-arounds to discuss areas of challenge or concerns and highlight where improvement is needed
• Attend any improvement workshops that the PIP creates
• Joining one of the workstreams who meet virtually once a week for one hour
• Being part of a subgroup focused on a particularly important issue for you
If you fancy it, we would love to hear from you! Simply drop us a line at: bhn-tr.pipteam@nhs.net
From the PIP team.
Would you like to be involved in the PIP? Email bhn-tr.pipteam@nhs.net to express your interest.
Would you like to be involved in the PIP? Email bhn-tr.pipteam@nhs.net to express your interest.