Issue 6June 2020

Three CHFT colleagues, Anu Rajgopal, Nas Rehman and Richard Hinchliffe represented CHFT at the Zoom Examiner Community awards last Thursday evening. We scooped the top Achievement Award - the last of the night - and host ITV newscaster Nina Hossain, said about all our 6,000+ colleagues, “You deserve more than this.

The World Health Organisation has announced a massive medical breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19.

With a surge in the numbers of patients critically ill with COVID-19, the need for support for patients who have left the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has never been greater and our Critical Care Outreach Team are working flat out.

We now have signage around our sites reminding colleagues and visitors to social distance, and asking everyone to keep to the left along our corridors to make them safer. All visitors to our hospitals are now required to wear face coverings from the moment they step over the threshold.

Just like many other organisations, here at CHFT we have had to embrace technology in order to continue to provide services. This has meant that many patients have been able to have their outpatient appointments remotely - and when we say remotely....

At CHFT we have a well-established BAME (Black Asian and Minority Ethnic) network for colleagues. Amongst other things, the network helps to raise awareness of cultural diversities across CHFT. Members of the network have been able to continue to meet virtually using Microsoft Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic (see top photo).

In the midst of the pandemic, we welcomed a new cohort of Foundation Interim Year doctors...earlier than expected! The photo shows them attending a socially distanced welcome hosted by our Deputy Medical Director Cornelle Parker.

We know how important it is to keep in touch with our local communities so we're delighted to be able to tell you that we are increasing the number of editions of our newsletter to three per year. Going forward, you'll receive this newsletter in February, June and October.

We asked two of our governors how lockdown has been for them.

Amazing things happen every day at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, thanks to the kindness and generosity of our local communities.

We've now been given details of how the NHS' 72nd birthday will be celebrated across the country. Over the weekend of July 4th and 5th everybody is being urged to take part in the biggest ‘thank you’ the country has ever seen. It will culminate in an epic 'pause for applause' at 5 pm on the 5th.

As a NHS Foundation Trust we are obliged to maintain a public register of our members. The register only contains members' names and the constituency to which they belong, and no other information is publicly available. To comply with GDPR, we now need to ask our existing members for their consent to be included on the register.

In the last issue we gave some shout outs to our amazing staff at CHFT for all their hard work and in this issue we want to celebrate the fantastic children who have been making us smile in these difficult times. Lots of colleagues have been sending in photos of their children and grandchildren who have been getting creative during lockdown to support the NHS.