2007 Suffolk Mental Health Partnerships Staff Side Questionnaire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suffolk Mental Health Partnerships NHS Trust

The Suffolk Health System from Staff Group members representing trade unions from UNISON, RCN, RCN, Amicus part of UNITE, BAOT, CSP and SoR carried out a questionnaire for all staff employed by Suffolk PCT, Suffolk Mental Health Partnerships NHS Trust and Ipswich Hospitals NHS Trust during April 2007 to help us understand what really concerns staff and help pin point why morale is so low within each organisation. Typically, since the radical government reforms to the NHS, staff members locally have been concerned as to why these changes and closures to departments and hospitals had to be done and in many cases, without what may be described as constructive consultation locally and nationally. Other concerns raised were on issues such as, why was it all done so quickly? Why doesn’t anybody listen? Why is communication not always meaningful? Where has job security gone? Are our communities really getting a better healthcare deal?

To help us all understand in more detail many of the major concerns staff have, we set out a series of carefully selected questions and constructed a questionnaire in both hard copy, which was sent out via a network of staff side representatives, and an electronic version made available through the local Suffolk HealthCare Branch of UNISON website hosted here at suffolkhealthcare.com

In total, there were just over 1000 valid responses to which some respondents made additional comments whilst others simply completed the questionnaire using the appropriate tick boxes.

Although the questionnaire itself was totally anonymous, it was set up with optional staff group tick boxes to indicate workplace and workgroup type only. This was set up to help us identify if any particular group was experiencing abnormal detriment, cutbacks or substantial growth opposed to decline.

We asked the same questions of all 3 employers with the exception of Ipswich Hospitals Staff Side members adding an additional 3 questions specific to that Trust.

SMHP NHS Trust was well represented with 318 valid questionnaires being completed reflecting a wide range of staff views from across the county. The majority of our returns were mostly from individuals, but in some cases questionnaires had been completed by small groups or teams as a whole and all being returned from each staff group from every part of the Trust.

All recorded, counted and checked responses have been since been converted into a percentage figure for easy comparison.

Initially we asked if staff thought that car parking should be free of charge at their workplace. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming majority of 97% said yes car parking should be free with only 3% saying that there should be a charge.

 

    

Conclusion
A full breakdown of all the questions asked and an analysis report from the responses taken in April 2007 can be seen or downloaded from the link below.

Read or download the completed questionnaire in full:
Link to a PDF document on this siteAcrobat PDF page and download

This report was submitted to SMHP Chief Executive and Directors Monday 16th July 2007

After months of seemingly ignoring our findings, it seems apparent this pre occupied Trust has more pressing engagements to consider such as bidding for "Foundation Hospital Status" other than the well being of it's staff. It may be considered (by some) this move will save future job loss and increase job security (for the hierarchy) but with this business venture sure to secure private finances and land a new shared premises and it's new HQ on the Ipswich Hospital site, many services and their future could be put in doubt as Catering, Cleaning, Transport, Estates and Human Resources may all be under threat of closure or down sizing. 

Foundation Trusts are:

part of a market in which trusts compete against each other for patients
unaccountable to the Secretary of State
have greater powers than other Trusts - for example to keep surpluses and borrow from the private sector.

UNISON believes Foundation Trusts will lead to increased inequalities between NHS services and the extension of charging.

We reject the government's argument that they are needed to increase local accountability and consider their governance arrangements to be flawed.