World Mental Health Day 2024: A message from our Chief Executive
As we mark World Mental Health Day today, we have so much to reflect on from the past year.
We have continued to work in collaboration with our patients, carers, staff and communities to improve our mental health services and facilities. We have taken important steps on our journey to become actively anti-racist. And we have worked to break mental health stigma in all its guises.
From our community street parties, to modernising our hospitals, and helping to raise our community’s mental health literacy with mental health first aid training, together we are shifting the dial on stigma.
As we saw in the shocking riots marked by racism, Islamophobia and violence over the summer, we still have a long way to go as a society to become anti-racist. We all have a responsibility to call out racism and stand together against hatred and discrimination in all its forms. It’s a small step but I’m really pleased that we have launched a new ‘values into behaviours’ framework to empower our colleagues to be actively anti-racist and to be clear what our organisation expects.
In terms of our services, tackling enduring Health Inequalities is at the heart of this, and was the focus of our Annual Public Meeting in September. Whether its recovery and access rates, under-representation, or the use of restrictive practice, thanks to our work in recent years we have clearer picture than ever before of how ethnic minoritised people experience and use (or don’t use) our services, and some of the reasons behind this.
Thank you to everyone who joined us to explore the racial disparities in our services and to think together about the path we must chart to ensure equity in access, treatment and outcomes for ethnic minoritised people in our communities.
Improving the care we provide and ensuring South West London and St George’s is a great place to work remain our other top priorities. I’m proud that we have reduced our vacancy rate by 20% and even more proud that 87% of our patients recommend our Trust as somewhere to receive care. It means so much to our staff to hear this feedback and we will keep striving to do even better.
I’m excited too that we’ll begin work next year to create state-of-the-art hospital buildings across Richmond and Kingston through our Better Environments programme. We took a huge step towards securing Tolworth Hospital’s redevelopment this week, and following Government sign-off this will see a further £110m invested to deliver modern facilities for our patients and our communities.
We have so much to celebrate and build on through continuous improvement, co-production and anti-racism and so much still to do. Thank you to all our patients, carers, staff, partners and stakeholders who have inspired and supported our work and also been respectful critical friends.
Together our work continues to deliver our Trust mission, Making Life Better Together.
Vanessa Ford, Chief Executive
South West London and St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust
