LOROS Internal Communications
Welcome
Welcome to the October issue of the Hospice Pin Board. Lots to enjoy this month – today (Monday 5th) is the start of Hospice Care Week and our We’re Here campaign, there's plenty of good news, the Winter Warmer Raffle launch and details about our new Staff Network group. We aren't back to normal by any stretch of the imagination, but we are taking small steps, including welcoming some patients back to Day Therapy, which will be a hugely beneficial step for those who have been unable to attend since March.
We haven’t received any spotlights this month, but we really do love hearing what all our different departments and teams are up to. Please do have a think in your next team or project meeting whether you can share what you are up to – we’d love to hear about it! Please email marketing@loros.co.uk with your spotlight.
Please don’t forget that all staff news and information is also available via the Staff Internal Homepage, important information about COVID-19 and LOROS is here, and information about the future of the Hospice is here. These pages are updated daily and are packed with information. If you have a question, it’s likely to be answered by the information on these pages.
Hope you enjoy, Sophie
We’re Here campaign for Hospice Care Week!
Today is the start of national Hospice Care Week and the launch of our new 'We're here' campaign!
As you know, when COVID-19 hit, we didn’t undertake an emergency appeal as Caroline Baker wanted a smarter, long-term approach to generating income and so we focused on pushing our existing activities using enhanced COVID-19 impact messaging. This worked, and saw us bring in more money than hospices that did an emergency appeal.
What we know from the Brand Research that was conducted, is that to increase our ‘share of wallet’ (i.e. Get people to support us over other charities) we need to better showcase what we do and the difference we make. This will be the subject of the ‘We’re here’ campaign.
It brings a change to the messaging we use externally, and will help us to secure long-term awareness raising and will provide a platform from which we can fundraise even more effectively in the future.
We’re here for you, because of you.
All week we will be giving people a behind the scenes look at the real impact of our care on our patients and their families.
We'll be showcasing how we're here and how we’re here making a difference.
Throughout the week you'll recognise the stars of our campaign, and we'd love you to help us spread the word and raise awareness of our great charity by sharing our social media posts!
Please note: Some photographs were taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic
Good news
Becca got married!
You might remember that the top good news story of our very first Pin Board way back in February was that Becca Cort was engaged. On Saturday, she and Mark got married surrounded by their closest family and she officially became Mrs Stevens. Through all the COVID-19 changes, she has been an absolute trooper and I think we can all agree she makes a beautiful bride. Congratulations to you both!
Volunteers returning to the Hospice
Some of our wonderful volunteers have begun to return to the Hospice! Our gardening, flower arranging and reception volunteers will be resuming their invaluable work over the coming weeks. I know we are all so happy to see them return to the Hospice! On another green-fingered note, the much anticipated poly-tunnel is currently being constructed behind the Hospice, allowing us to grow fresh produce for the kitchens and for patients to get involved.
Amazon Smile donations
We recently received our quarterly payment from Amazon Smile of £686, bringing the grand total we have received of the last few years to £2,555.24! If you don’t order through Amazon Smile already then now is the perfect time to start. Amazon Smile donates 0.5% of your eligible purchases at no extra cost to you, to a charity of your choice (hopefully LOROS!). All you need to do is start your shopping at smile.amazon.com rather than the normal Amazon site.
Afternoon Tea picnics a great success
In place of this year’s Ladies Lunch, picnic Afternoon Teas were sent out to those who signed up and they went down brilliantly! We’ve received so many lovely pictures from supporters of them enjoying their picnics at home. Here is Debbie Mackness and her daughters Emma, Janine and Sophie enjoying the LOROS Afternoon Tea - some of you might remember Debbie from her stay at LOROS a few years ago. You can read her patient story here – it’s pretty amazing!
Well done to the events team for such a fab event.
COVID-19 Vaccine Registry
Last month we included the details of how to sign up for the COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry. The launch was extremely successful with nearly 235,000 people across the United Kingdom signing up to take part in research to find a vaccine for COVID-19, including 17,780 from the East midlands alone – including some wonderful LOROS staff! The aim is to recruit half a million volunteers via the COVID-19 vaccine registry by October. If you missed it last month you can sign up here.
Professor Faull’s Research published
Congratulations to Professor Christina Faull. The findings of some research that Professor Faull was involved with were published last week and can be seen here.
Rocket Round Leicester's Learning Programme Launch!
Last week we were very excited to launch our Learning Programme!
We are inviting schools, colleges and community groups from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland to join us on our mission to infinity and beyond, and give their students lessons that are out of this world!
Everyone that joins our Rocket Round Leicester Learning Programme will receive their very own mini Rocket sculpture - the Junior Jet - to design and decorate, plus a resource pack which includes fun classroom games, ideas for fundraising and lesson plans, that are all easy to incorporate into the national curriculum!
It's an amazing way to get everyone up and doing something together, especially after the year we've all had. The Rocket Round Leicester Learning Programme promises to enhance lessons with creativity and fun, whilst introducing topics such as fundraising and the importance of local charities
Are you a school governor, part of a PTA or have a partner that works at a local school or college? Are you part of a community group? Are you ready to help us reach for the stars?
Visit rocketroundleicester.co.uk/learning, or speak to Debbie Dickman to find out more!
Senior Management Committee (SMC) update
Following a short pause in the SMC Pin Board updates due to Coronavirus the SMC updates are restarting with John providing a monthly run down of what the team is working on.
October review
Following all the recent significant changes that LOROS has made, a second, much smaller review of the Hospice’s fitness for the future is planned for October. This will be undertaken by John, the SMC team and our Trustees.
Time to Think sessions
The SMC team has started their ‘Time to Think’ sessions, where 1.5 hours of each meeting is set aside for a focused, strategic look at subjects affecting LOROS, both internally and externally. Recent subjects have included the Quality Improvement initiative and reviewing where LOROS sits in the wider LLR healthcare picture alongside UHL and LPT.
New style HoDs meetings
As anyone who has been in a two-hour Teams meeting knows – two hours is too long. Because of this a new style of HoDs meeting has been trialled where it is broken into two sections; an hour long departmental update section and an hour to discuss organisationally important subjects, for example, CQC readiness (don’t worry – we aren’t expecting an imminent inspection!). So far it has been a success and will continue to be trialled.
Business Development
by Anna Shutt, Income Generation and Business Development Co-ordinator
The past month has been busy for business development.
Unfortunately, we had to cancel the cinema weekend. Whilst this was a tough decision we can take many positives from the planning of it.
The event has brought us new supporters and has shown that there was a lot of interest for the weekend. The businesses we were working with for the weekend have kindly offered their support for a new date next year. So, as soon as the weather and COVID-19 restrictions improve, we will be ready to put another fun-filled weekend on. I would like to say thank you to the many staff members that offered to volunteer during the weekend, events simply cannot go ahead without your support.
As you will know, the purpose of business development is to explore new income streams for LOROS. The past few months has shown the importance of this more than ever. To that end we have been exploring several new opportunities. One being a series of car boot sales on the land we have the use of in Groby, another being the potential to expand our café offerings. These are both in the very early stages but we hope to be able to bring you more updates next month.
To be able to help fund new business development projects, we have been looking into the many schemes available to charities and social enterprise projects. These schemes include investments such as crowdfunding, social investment or community investment. Again this research is in the early stages but we will keep you updated.
If you have any questions regarding business development please feel free to email me.
Hellos and goodbyes
Welcome to our one new starter! If you fancy having a look at who they are then you can access staff profiles via Select HR.
Hellos
Georgia Pentney |
Deputy Shop Manager |
Goodbyes
Stacey Hubber |
Clinical Information Officer |
Alek Akkan |
Van Driver / Delivery Person |
Rebecca Davies |
Registered Nurse - Green Team |
Veronica Mickleburgh |
Patient Experience Lead |
Margaret Jones |
Catering Assistant |
Sandra Wright |
Bereavement Services Facilitator |
Karen Webster |
Administrator - Enterprises |
Anjana Vaja |
Cultural Support Officer |
Jean Langley |
Telephonist/Operations Clerk |
Rosemary Pasimupindu |
Senior Practice Development Practitioner |
Adrian Walker |
Community Projects Lead |
Susan Swann |
Administrator - Fundraising |
Pauline Koelling |
Physiotherapist |
Hannah Poulton |
Physiotherapist |
Michael Johnston |
Mobile Resource Driver/Support & Information Officer |
Policy and clinical updates
Please find below the list of recent updates to policies
Policy Number |
Title |
New/Revised/Deleted |
1.18 |
Research Governance |
Revised |
1.21 |
Non Clinical Complaints |
Revised |
2.6 |
Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation |
Revised |
3.23 |
Medicines Management |
Revised |
4.5 |
Personal Safety & Lone Working |
Revised |
4.9 |
Smoking & use of Electronic Cigarettes/Vaping at Work |
Revised |
9.18 |
Sharps Management |
Revised |
9.22 |
Animals in the Hospice |
Revised |
New and revised policies are available to view within Organisation Information on the Common (G) Drive: G:\13. Organisation Information\Policies
Paper copies of polices can also be found on the Inpatient Unit behind the Ward Clerk’s desk.
For You – Wellbeing, HR and personal development
New Staff Wellbeing programme
by Liz McIntyre
The last few months have been difficult – and that is probably an understatement. Whether you’ve been working clinically on our ‘frontline’, working throughout the pandemic either in the Hospice or from home, or whether you’ve been on furlough – we each have had much to deal with and we each will have experienced the personal and professional pressures of COVID-19 in different ways.
As an organisation we’ve learnt a lot and as we face the possibility of a ‘second wave’, we want to use your feedback to ensure that we do the best we can to support your health and wellbeing as we move forwards.
To this end, a proposal for potential health and wellbeing activities for LOROS staff has been devised and will be shared with teams on 5th October. This consultation will ensure that the programme on offer reflects your ideas and addresses the needs of our workforce – your feedback really does matter.
Members of SMC will be taking the lead on operational decisions and approaches for clinical services and these will be communicated separately, however several proposed interventions will be available to all staff, having either been suggested by you – our staff, or have been trialled with success in other organisations.
It is important that we build a programme that is based on your needs and requirements as a workforce and as such, we would value your feedback well as to receive any suggestions for other ideas. It is our intention to launch this programme from Monday 19th October and as such we would be grateful for your feedback by Friday, 16th October.
If you have any questions about the consultation or would like to discuss any element of the health and wellbeing plan, please email me.
LOROS Vacancies
Fancy a change or a new challenge? You can view all the latest LOROS vacancies and new opportunities on the website. Lots of us aren’t in the Hospice at the moment so won’t be seeing the jobs on notice boards around the Hospice so we want to make sure you don’t miss out.
Staff Network Group Launch
We know that the staff at LOROS are one of our greatest assets!
This is why we are launching a Staff Network Group. The group will be key to helping the Hospice to become the best it can be. By involving our staff (you) in decisions, we can improve morale and create a culture that embraces diversity.
The aims of the Staff Network group will be:
· to act as champions to support and provide guidance to other staff across the organisation;
· to work in partnership and have regular communication with management;
· to learn about and share best practice initiatives to improve outcomes for all staff;
· to be a safe point of contact for other staff members and an active influential voice;
· to support and contribute to initiatives that develop positive work experiences;
· to organise activities/events that raise awareness and improve cultural understanding;
· to be a sounding board for management to assist in service development and/or redesign;
· to engage with the local networks across LLR to help deliver the above and share initiatives with other organisations.
The first meeting will take place on Tuesday 27th October 2020 at 2.30pm in Saunders and Twycross Rooms in LPDC and on Teams for those who are working from home. If you are interested in attending or would like to find out more then please email Sandy Zavery.
We want your comments, through a short survey questionnaire to understand your awareness of the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda and your availability to attend meetings. This is your opportunity to make a real difference and to contribute to enhancing the working environment by bringing the EDI agenda to life across all areas of LOROS. You can complete the questionnaire here.
Coaches at LOROS
Even though we aren’t all at the Hospice or our normal workplace currently, the LOROS coaches are still available for you to call upon. They are a resource for you and an opportunity for you to have ‘coaching’ conversations that help and support you in your work.
Coaching is a very powerful process and is being increasingly used in all professions. Our hope within LOROS is that it can help to tackle matters early on long before they become bigger issues, that it gives you an outlet to talk and investigate your options. The new resource is for professional work related coaching matters – it is not ‘life’ coaching. The trained coaches are as follows:
· Andrew Ward
· Hannah Bold
· Rebecca Cort
· Rachel Lattimore
· Laura Fitzsawyer
· Angela Baxter (currently furloughed)
· Jo Potts
· Bethany Tomlinson
· Angela Salt
You are free to approach any of these people and ask for a coaching session. Each of them has an allocation of 1.5 hours per week or six hours per month to deliver coaching within their job role. Your session with them is confidential assuming it is not a matter of critical health and safety or safeguarding. They will not report to anyone about your coaching session - it is in total confidence.
There is an extensive HR section on the Important Information section of the intranet and any additional queries should, in the first instance, be directed to your line manager.
LOROS Tropic sale
Carol Askew, one of our lovely long-time supporters, is holding a Tropic sale with 15% of the sales coming to LOROS and a further 5% donation from Carol herself. So if you fancy a treat for yourself or want to get a head start on your Christmas shopping then head to www.tropicskincare.com/carolaskew and have a browse. Just make sure that you add Carol's name as the ambassador so that she can ensure we get all the donation coming our way!
LOROS needs you
Winter Warmer Raffle
“We have a bed available for your Mum.”
One sentence that sent a million emotions running through our heads and our hearts.
Chanel’s mum Debbie was just 43 when she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She sadly passed away at home on Christmas Day 2019, after being cared for at LOROS for a number of weeks. Chanel and her family are kindly supporting our Winter Warmer Raffle in memory of their mum. Read more about their journey here.
Christmas is about spending time with those we love. This year is no different, but it may look a little different to what we’re used to. Whatever Christmas means to you, and whatever it brings, we will all make our own memories in our own way. LOROS will still be here, even on Christmas day, making this festive season special for many patients and their loved ones.
With your help, our Winter Warmer Raffle could be bigger and better than ever before! And boy do we need it! Buy tickets, tell friends and family all about it, share our social media posts, and spread the word whenever and wherever you can. Imagine celebrating this Christmas with £10,000, or make your New Year sparkle with some amazing plans for 2021. Support us online today, give us a call (0116) 231 8430, pop into any LOROS shop, or simply return your postal raffle pack. Tickets available from the 1st October to the 6th December.
Raffle players and purchasers must be 18 or over. Be gamble aware Begambleaware.org. All participants of LOROS Lotteries Limited games must be a resident of Great Britain.
For more information about our raffle, how it supports the Hospice and our terms and condition, please follow this link to our Gambling and you page.
Calling all bakers!
To promote our 2020 Care for Christmas Cake campaign, we're asking LOROS staff to share their favourite baking recipes. Do you have a carrot cake recipe that's been in the family for years? Or a favourite brownie mix that your friends and family can't get enough of? If so, we'd love to know!
We'd like to inspire LOROS supporters to get their apron on and hold a bake sale of their own this Christmas by sharing some of your own wonderful creations. If you'd like to help, please send your recipes and photos to Steph. They will be featured on our Facebook throughout the campaign from 12th October to Thursday 24th December.
And of course, if you've been inspired by the Great British Bake Off and would like to have your own bake sale, we'd love you to get involved. More details will follow on 12th October, when Care for Christmas Cake officially launches.
Team Spotlight
We haven’t received any spotlights this month, but we all really do love hearing what all our different departments and teams are up to. Please have a think in your next team or project meeting whether you can share what you are up to – we’d love to hear about it! Please email marketing@loros.co.uk with your spotlight.
Heads of Department meeting – in brief
There hasn’t been another HoDs meeting since the last Pin Board, but don’t forget all the minutes are circulated to everyone via email and you can view all the previous minutes on the common drive.
Hospice Pin Board deadlines
The dates and deadlines for 2021’s Hospice Pin Boards have been added below. If you have anything in the pipeline then let me know – it’s never too early to give me the heads up!
Please email marketing@loros.co.uk anything you would like to go into the Pin Board.
Content Deadline |
Release Date |
Tues 27th October |
Mon 2nd November |
Tues 1st December |
Mon 7th December |
Tues 29th December |
Mon 4th January |
Tues 26th January |
Mon 1st February |
Tues 23rd February |
Mon 1st March |
Tues 30th March |
Mon 5th April |
Tues 27th April |
Mon 3rd May |
Tues 1st June |
Mon 7th June |
Tues 29th June |
Mon 5th July |
Tues 27th July |
Mon 2nd August |
Tues 31st August |
Mon 6th September |
Tues 28th September |
Mon 4th October |
Tues 26th October |
Mon 1st November |
Tues 30th November |
Mon 6th December |