New Bespoke Training at Surrey and Borders

Our first bespoke training for 2024 will take place in April when we travel to Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to deliver three days of bespoke face-to-face training to all the managers of this trust. The training will cover staff responsiveness and working with families with confidence, using Duty of Candour well, having difficult conversations with distressed patients and families, engaging well with people who have been part of an incident in the spirit of PSIRF, and lots more. We’re very excited to deliver this training and work with this organisation for the first time. Staff from this …

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Trevor Stevens Speaks on Radio 4

Making Families Count member Trevor Stevens spoke to Marina Cantacuzino as part of her BBC Sounds series “Forgiveness – Stories from the Front Line”, which has also been shared on Radio 4. If you haven’t heard this programme yet, I strongly recommend it to you. It’s powerful and humbling though if you’ve lost a loved one to suicide, you might find it a upsetting.  Trevor talks so movingly about his lovely daughter Tobi and about why he chose afterwards to engage constructively with the trust who were caring for Tobi at the time of her death.  You can access the …

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Making Families Count at RCPCH Annual Conference

This year, Making Families Count have been asked to speak at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Annual Conference on 26 March in Birmingham. Rosi Reed will be speaking as part of a longer session on the use and implementation of Martha’s Rule and how we can improve the way clinicians work with families of young patients, particularly when the patient’s condition is deteriorating. Rosi’s presentation will focus on why clinicians sometimes fail to engage well with families, the barriers to good engagement, and how we can overcome them. In typical MFC style, Rosi will be using real-life …

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New MFC Members

Making Families Count are pleased to announce that we have two new members, Trevor Stevens and Sue Willgoss, and our new members have already been busy working with MFC. Trevor has written pieces for our blog and been a speaker at several MFC webinars. Sue has been working with MFC members Jan Sunman and Stephen Habgood on our Autism training. We welcome both Trevor and Sue and look forward to working with them both in the future. We have no doubt that they’ll bring even more knowledge, experience, passion and commitment to the work of Making Families Count in the future.

Patient Safety Education Network

Rosi Reed of Making Families Count will be speaking at the Patient Safety Education Network on Friday 8 March. Her presentation is “The importance of establishing a meaningful relationship with families after a patient safety incident”, though she’ll also be talking about the work of Making Families Count and the training they offer around this.  Last year, Rosi was asked to speak at a similar event with a different group.  Chris Elson of PSEN was in the audience for that and then invited her to speak to their members, too. We find speaking at these type of events is a great way …

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The Battle Against Nothing to See Here

On November 2nd, 2017, I was transported instantly from the bubble I call my life, to a completely different bubble. My new, hugely unwelcome bubble happened when my grandson Harry was born at East Kent hospitals and made extremely unwell by abstract poor care. The new bubble demanded completely different priorities, different emotions and was totally alien to me and those around me. The details behind what happened to Harry can be found here at harrysstory.co.uk. However, today I want to explore some aspects of how complaints were handled for us. The Battle against “Nothing to See Here” When Harry died on …

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New appointment for Rosi Reed

HSJ are delighted to invite Rosi Reed of Making Families Count to join the HSJ Patient Safety Congress 2024 Advisory Board.  The core focus of the Advisory Board is to work with the organisers to recommend content and speakers for the congress and ensure that the event provides the best possible platform to support improvements in patient safety in the UK. We have valued Rosi’s insights, guidance, support, and on-site chairing of sessions at the Congress and very much look forward to working with her in her new capacity.

Everyone’s business

Back in the summer, I tuned in to Newsnight for an item about an NHS Trust where 8,000 people in touch with mental health services died in three years. My daughter was one of the 8,000. Whilst watching the programme, I wondered what I would have thought if I hadn’t been personally involved in these tragedies. I’d have been shocked, definitely, but not necessarily touched. They would have been other people’s stories. “Suicide is everyone’s business” is not my phrase, but one used by Stephen Habgood, Director of MFC, in a discussion following a webinar we co-presented. To which most …

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Patient Safety Congress (Part 2): Apologies and Forgiveness

At the Patient Safety Congress, I learned how an apology can bring about a minor miracle. James Titcombe related how he lost his baby boy due to serious failings in maternity care. Although these were later detailed in the Morecambe Bay report, James felt there was still a gap in his healing needs. He had never had the chance to speak to any of the people involved in his son’s death and he was left with a sense that nobody cared. Eight years later the Trust facilitated a meeting with one of the midwives they had suspended. During this, she burst …

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Impressions from the Patient Safety Congress (Part 1)

When I was asked if I’d like to attend the Patient Safety Congress in Manchester in September, I saw no reason not to say yes. Why ever not? I thought. Who wouldn’t want to meet people concerned with keeping patients safe? What’s not to like, as they say? I didn’t realise at that point I would also be listening to people talking about how patients are not kept safe, but at least it wasn’t all about suicide.  When I turned up, I didn’t know whether any of it would make sense to me. I don’t work in healthcare, what’s patient safety got …

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