Leaving Middle Earth, or Halton at least....

Leaving Middle Earth, or Halton at least....

At the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in the book The Return Of The King, Frodo departs for the Undying Lands in the West with Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and many Elves. Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel all carry with them the Three Eleven Rings out of Middle-Earth. With their departure, the Third Age ended.

Three of our "ring bearers" will be leaving Halton at the end of March, taking with them (like the Elves) years of experience and wisdom in the NHS (not like the Elves). We are saying goodbye to three NHS heroes, three legends in their field who have well over 100 years of service between them. Dr Cliff Richards MBE is retiring as our Chair, Jan Snoddon is stepping down as Chief Nurse and Paul Brickwood is also retiring as our Chief Finance Officer.

It has been a pleasure to work with three people who are absolutely committed to the NHS, to getting the best for patients and who are hugely talented and respected in their own professional field. They are being replaced by three highly capable and talented individuals - Dr David Lyon, Michelle Creed and David Cooper - each of whom will bring their own take on life and on the role they will fill. So, as with the end of The Return Of The King, there is an emotional ending but the future is bright and safe.

Simon Banks 

Delivering Better Births in Cheshire and Merseyside

Delivering Better Births in Cheshire and Merseyside

We were delighted to able to host a visit from Baroness Cumberlege of Newick and Professor Sir Cyril Chantler earlier this month. Baroness Cumberlege was the Chair of a review of maternity services for NHS England in 2015 and Professor Sir Cyril Chantler was Vice-Chair. Better Births, the report of the review, sets out a vision for safe and efficient models of maternity care: safer care, joined up across disciplines, reflecting women’s choices and offering continuity of care along the pathway. 

Cheshire and Merseyside has been chosen as an “early adopter” site by NHS England to implement the recommendations in Better Births, which is why Baroness Cumberlege and Professor Sir Cyril Chantler were visiting us. This work is being delivered by 27 NHS organisations working together as the Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s and Children’s Services Partnership. The Partnership is hosted and supported by NHS Halton CCG.

The visit took in maternity services across Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens and Warrington. Both Baroness Cumberlege and Professor Sir Cyril Chantler were impressed by the progress we have been making in improving local maternity services and in our future plans and aspirations to establish a Local Maternity System across Cheshire and Merseyside that delivers Better Births.

A bright future for Halton Hospital

A bright future for Halton Hospital
 
There have been a lot of rumours recently about the future of Halton Hospital. There have been some stories on social media and other platforms suggesting, quite wrongly, that the site has no future. This is strange given that the local NHS has invested heavily in services on the site in recent years, including the transfer of the Cheshire and Merseyside Treatment Centre building to Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the development of additional elective services and the opening of a new Urgent Care Centre. As you may have also seen elsewhere in the media, we now want to take this to the next level, working with the Trust and Halton Borough Council.
 
Exciting plans to develop a fully integrated community focused health and wellbeing campus at Halton Hospital have been unveiled. This comes as a result of the selection of the Halton Lea area that surrounds the Halton Hospital campus as one of NHS England’s Healthy New Towns demonstrator sites in March 2016. The ‘healthy new town’ concept aims to shape the health of communities and rethink how health and care services can be delivered within communities. This work is being led by Halton Borough Council, working with the NHS, and represents the efforts of a wide range of partners across the health and social care, retail and leisure, housing and regeneration sectors.
 
Our plans are still being formulated and more information is available here  This is, we believe, a once in a generation opportunity to do something different and innovative with existing NHS estate at heart of a local community. If we pull this off the future for Halton Hospital is very bright indeed.

Simon Banks