A number of UNISON members have been seriously assaulted whilst working for the Trust. A large number of other staff are on the recieving end of verbal attacks and minor assaults daily.
It has become evident that a number of staff have been suspended whilst acting in a reasonable manner in order to protect and defend themselves. Given the Trusts position in these matters we advise all members who are on the recieving end of any verbal threat, including racism, minor or major physical assault or threat to report the matter immediately to the police.
Nursing staff should not be victims of intimidation or threats, the Trust is required by law to provide a safe wroking environment which given the events of the past few months many members are reporting that is no longer the case. 
Click on the link above to report an incident to UNISON

Yunus Bakhsh Wins Employment Tribunal against Northumberland Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust. The judgement makes some pretty damning statements about the Trust Managers in handling this case who were not credible & found to have broken the law in relation to his UNISON Branch Secretary role and attempt to discredit and penalise him due to his successful Branch Activities.

Yunus led the anti - AFC pay debate at the special Health Conference, the failure of the president at that conference to hold a card vote caused a lot of discontent. Yunus was a real asset to UNISON and we look forward to seeing him back in UNISON using his skills to defend members and attacking the Conservative Government

Clink on the link to hear the truth about the British Airways dispute and send messages of support to our Unite colleagues.

Bank staff are required to undertake Mandatory Training, this will be in the form of paid study leave.
UNISON is clear that staff need the full range of valid mandadory skills training to be effective in clinical areas.
The Trust are stating that any bank staff who do not comply with the Training will not be eligible to work.
UNISON advises all bank staff to undertake this training at the earliest opportunity.

We regularly recieve complaints regarding payroll errors, staff are under or over paid, recently a member had their pension contribitutions stopped two years ago and did not realise she was not in the pension scheme. Its very important that you check your payslips monthly as mistakes are a common occurance but can usually be resolved quickly. Are you getting the correct London Allowance and/or recruitment premium. If you are concerned please call payroll (020 8591 4700 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              020 8591 4700      end_of_the_skype_highlighting )in the first instance to establish some facts and seek an explanation. Following that speak with your line manager. If you do got get a satisfactory answer contact your local steward.
29.4.10
We have recieved a number of complaints regarding tax codes given to staff,Last month Inland Revenue sent around some forms asking for verification of your tax code. If you failed to respond chances are that the tax office would have used the DO code which is not applicable. If there is a discrepancy you will need to call the tax office “pronto” at 08453000627 Ref 951-R15 ,have your NIS number when you call.

Comment: all of the above cases resulted in life changing events, careers ended, families split up, a criminal record and financial ruin. The NHS counter fraud systems are robust and rightly prosecute staff who steal money from the NHS.  

UPCOMING EVENTS

Health Training Day 10th October

The Trust along with most inner London Mental Trusts had their ratings reduced from Excellent to Good for 'Use of resources' and 'Quality of services. Use the link below to get full details of the Trust rating.
Comments would be welcome via the comments page.

The recent FT council meeting met to discuss the Trust 'Quality Accounts' and Care Quality Commission  submission. The scale of the task was quite significant given the couple of hours allocated.
A later session focussed on the size of the council which primarily due to it being a 3 London Borough Trust has over 40 representatives, of that 40+ only 7 are staff members. The discussion about how or if we should reduce the size of the council was very dissjointed and fragmented with nothing clearly agreed.A proposal to break up the staff seats into constituences was rejected by all staff council members.
As Council members, the three UNISON members are clear that there should be no reduction in the number of staff representatives as we are already under represented and with  the pending inclusion of Newham PCT we would want additional seats. 
Baroness Meacher will present a more detailed paper at the next full FT Council Meeting.

 The Trust have initiated the early stages of the development of the long awaited MHCOP Directorate in appointing the Director: Michael McGee and Clinical Director: Dr O'Mahoney. Both have extensive experience of MHCOP services and a vision to improve these servcies. 
UNISON looks forward to participating fully in encouraging and shaping this important service. Mental Health Care of Older Persons services is often overlooked and staff can feel marginalised yet they care for the most dependent and vulnerable service users. The new directorate recognises the uniqueness and speciality that it is.  We support this development and look foward to hearing more details as the service moves forward. Further details of the service plans are being drawn up but its likely that consolditation and mergers of wards are probable and staff redeployed in order to fund the improved community based services. A key indicator of the Trusts intent to pursue better standards would be to abolish the band 2 nurse role with its MHCOP directorate, no other directorate employs staff on such low pay bands.

It is now three years since the first elections for FT Council Members(in other Trusts they are called Governors).
It has been an interstesting three years and its likely the next three will be different as Council Members may actually get some real powers.
The past three years have been notably for the lack of substance and detail discussed in the Council Meetings, they are often infiltrated by a large number of senior managers whose guidance of discussions and decision making by having at least one on each table is is clearly at odds with its constitution.
Through no fault of their own, public members of the council are at a serious disadvantage as they have little real information about the reality of services their development and are fully dependent on mind numbing jargon and power point presentations.
UNISON took the view very early that we would nominate and support UNISON accredited officers in the election of Council Members. We believe that it is important that for the nearly 1000 members of UNISON in this Trust that UNISON aims and policy be very clearly raised and present in council meetings, we also belive that our position is shared by many other staffside unisons and non members alike.
It has to be stated that Senior Mangers at East One tried to disqualify UNISON taking part in the first election by alledging spurious breaches of rule which with our legal advisors, Thompsons Solicitors, we rejected.
We do not believe that individual staff who have no accountability other that to themselves are in the best position to have robust debates with The Trust Chair and Chief Excecutive.
UNISON Reps on the Council: John Peers, Sandra Payne and George Paton have raised some very important points in recent meetings, for instance we raised the prospect of nursing cuts whilst at the same time the council were being asked to try and recommend improvements to services. The Chair ruled that was not for discussion at that meeting!
UNISON reps were the only staff side reps to oppose the 200% rise in non-executive directors expenses and the 100% rise in the Trust Chairs Expenses.
UNISON does not seek to oppose the Trust on many of these matters but we do seek to ensure the full Foundation Trust Council has some informed information and insight into the reality of services provided and how the Trust should be held to account.
There are difficult times ahead it is important experienced advocates with an understanding of the local and national implications of Trust plans are elected to the FT Council.
UNISON will be finalising its list of nominations shortly and will be announced in due course.

A new guide has been made available to employers in the NHS that offers advice on how to ensure staff can report bad practice.
The Speak up for a Healthy NHS guide is aimed at creating a culture within the health service that ensures staff feel secure about reporting bad practice if they deem services to not be up to the required level.

Following the JSC away day last year it was agreed to address Improving working lives agenda using the National IWL Framework 2009 in partnership with Staffside Representatives.
Although the NHS is having to manage reduced funding it is important that Improving the working lives of staff remains a major factor in maintanting morale and motivation and we acknowledge the Trust commitment to to this important peice of work.
Diane Aston is lead from the Trust & Sandra Payne is lead from the staffside.
Meetings will be scheduled throught the year to address:

The seven areas of activity
1. Human resources and strategy
2. Equality and diversity
3. Partnership working
4. Flexible working
5. Healthy workplace
6. Training and development
7. Support for carers and childcare Annex A.

Full details can be found either by linking to the IWL logo or downloading the full document below.
We will provide regular updates on this website

UNISON is not noted for taking articles about the Health Service or its staff in the Daily Mail seriously, but we could not ignore the list of the top 10 highest paid NHS Chief Exec's, our very own Dr Dolan recieves £215000 a year.(Hackney's PCT Chief gets an amazing £245,000!)
It will be difficult not to be mindful of this fact when it comes to discussing staff pay rises which are often identified as part of the Trusts financial difficulties.
Source Daily Mail 12.4.10

Last year the Prime Minister asked the Commission to advise him on how to build the future of health care, and give nurses and midwives a bigger say in service design and leadership as well as care delivery. The Commission proposes a number of specific ways to bring this about.

One key proposal is that ward sisters, charge nurses and equivalent team leaders in the community and midwifery should be restored to their former traditional positions of authority as visible care champions. To do so they need optimum support and training.

The Commission makes it clear that responsibility for high quality and compassionate care starts at the front line and goes right up to board level.  To ensure accountability all boards should include a Director of Nursing. This was debated when the Foundation Trust was created and UNISONs strong support for a Board Level Nurse Director ensured we were not one of the Trusts without a nurse at the most senior level of management. Alongside the Mid Staffs report, it is very clear, clinical staff must take the lead in defending services from meaningless tick box systems or cuts that have no regard for our service users or primary purpose.

Across all the Trust In-patient wards staff are slowly getting used to the E-Rota system, as staff get familar with it many of the fuctions its carry's out will mean less duplication elsewhere in the Trust.
The next phase will be the introduction of a e-bank system which will make the management of bank hours and staff much easier.
Following that the role out of the MAPS system in community teams will start.
The Trust have stated they want all Trust staff to move onto the system as it is a very effective attendance record. We have no objections to that but would want to see this universally accepted with no privilidged groups being excluded.

UNISON HEALTH BRANCHES FROM ACROSS THE GREATER LONDON REGION MET TO DISCUSS HEALTH ISSUES AND CONCERNS OF MEMBERS.
Mike Jackson National Officer and Lead Staff Council Negotiator briefed the delegates on the main national polictal party manifesto's and the implications for staff. It was clear that only Labour were committed to  national NHS terms and conditions and also committed to the current pension scheme as it was only 4 years ago renegotiated.
The financial state of the NHS remains unclear, the cuts being stated are assumptions not made are not based on any real evidence.
There are concerns that should a non Labour government be elected that many of the existing agreements may be subject to re-negotiation.
Individual Foundation Trusts have already tried a number of attempts to freeze pay, increment points, reduce sickness entitlement but have been roundly condemned and rejected by Branch, Regional and national responses.
Its clear that mass redundancies are not an option, Trust assurances about not making compulsory redundancies is meaningless as they cannot afford it.
There are plans to establish a London wide framework agreement which will map out the terms under which major re-organisation is negotiated.

At the end of Mike Jacksons presentation our delegates had to leave to attend the Trust JSC.