Freedom to Speak Up Guardian
Click here to see our Speaking Up Policy
Every NHS trust must have a Freedom to Speak Up (FtSU) Guardian to give independent support and advice to staff who want to raise concerns.
Guardians work with all staff to help NHS trusts become more open and transparent places where staff are actively encouraged and supported to ‘speak up’ safely without fearing the consequences.
We have a Lead FtSU Guardian and local Guardians available to support staff with concerns, however small or difficult, across the Trust. More information including contact details is available on the intranet.
If you have a concern you can raise it formally or informally with your line manager (or lead clinician or tutor) but if you don’t think this is appropriate for any reason you can use any of the options in the Speaking Up Policy (also known as the Whistleblowing Policy) including making a Datix report or contacting:
- The Risk management team
- The HR Team
- The Freedom to Speak Up Guardians (via [email protected] or individual contact details on the intranet)
- Any of our Fairness Champions (see below)
- Executive Directors
- Our Non-Executive Director with responsibility for whistleblowing: Laura Robson
- The Local Counter Fraud specialist Steven Moss
- Staff governors
- Your Trade Union or Professional Organisation
Fairness Champions
We have also appointed our first Fairness Champions and encourage more staff to join us in promoting the Trust values and behaviours, an open culture and speaking up, and specifically addressing undermining and bullying behaviours and unfairness. More information is available on the intranet.
Further resources and information
There is also useful information available at: Freedom to Speak Up Hub: NHS Employers and National Freedom to Speak Up Guardian’s Office and Protect – Speak up, stop harm.
The GMC highlight that all doctors have a duty to raise concerns where they believe that patient safety or care is being compromised by the practice of colleagues or the systems, policies and procedures in the organisations in which they work. See GMC: Raising and acting on concerns about patient safety and the flowchart below. BMA have developed guidance for doctors on raising concerns about patient safety and dealing with complaints at BMA – Raising concerns and dealing with complaints.
Health Education England’s e-Learning for Healthcare team has developed e-learning sessions to equip healthcare staff with the knowledge and confidence to raise concerns. These are available from OLM and personal training accounts.
In addition three education and training films have been developed – “Raising Concerns, “Responding to Concerns” and “Making Speaking Up Business as Usual”. The films, which complement the e-learning, support healthcare professionals to feel empowered to raise and respond to concerns. To view the films please click here.
Wellbeing Champions – more information coming soon
We will soon be recruiting new Wellbeing Champions – would you like to know more?
A Wellbeing Champion is someone who would like to improve health and wellbeing and to contribute to developing a culture of positive health within their team or department. They will have access to training, information and on-going support and be part of a network of Wellbeing Champions across the Trust. It’s a new role and you can be part of developing it so we best support and improve wellbeing in as many different ways as possible. Ideally we need people from different roles, disciplines and teams so please don’t be put off from finding out more wherever you work, we would love to hear from you.
If you would like to know more email [email protected] and we will send you some more information and an opportunity to chat about the role.