COLUMN: Recruitment builds for future - By Chris Higgins, of Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

We know that the pandemic is bound to have impacted the mental wellbeing of many people in the county, especially those who have endured long spells of isolation, have experienced the loss of a loved one, or are feeling anxious about restrictions being removed.
Ash Villa has been reopened as a new acute treatment serviceAsh Villa has been reopened as a new acute treatment service
Ash Villa has been reopened as a new acute treatment service

We know that the pandemic is bound to have impacted the mental wellbeing of many people in the county, especially those who have endured long spells of isolation, have experienced the loss of a loved one, or are feeling anxious about restrictions being removed.

It’s vitally important that people know they are never on their own.

Here, in Lincolnshire, we are ramping up our recruitment to support our passionate and dedicated workforce, as we strive to continue enhancing the quality of service to reflect the needs of our service users.

Despite the pressures of Covid-19, we have continued to progress and explore areas we feel we can improve, and have identified we could develop our acute in-patient service even further.

Staff in our in-patient services – which include the Peter Hodgkinson Centre, in Lincoln; Ward 12 in Boston; and Ash Villa in Greylees, near Sleaford – have the challenging, but rewarding, job of caring for some of the most unwell people in our community and transforming their lives from a point of crisis, to a place where they are able to be safely discharged back into community care.

Through one-to-one therapeutic time and a multi-disciplinary team effort, our in-patient teams speak highly of the rewarding experience they enjoy by making a tangible difference to the lives 
of the people within their care.

We want to continue this incredible work by bringing even more staff into this highly-skilled environment, where every day brings the excitement of a new challenge and an opportunity to learn.

We are offering staff an opportunity to continually develop and will soon be introducing a new development framework for existing and new acute in-patient staff to develop their specialist skills; introduce more senior nursing roles; and create more career opportunities within the teams.

We are also reviewing the training we provide to ensure our teams have all the tools they need to carry on delivering outstanding care.

We are also working hard to improve and upgrade our current estate.

We’ve refurbished and reopened Ash Villa as a new acute treatment service in the county, while £37 million of national funding has been secured to re-provide our three adult acute wards in Lincoln and Boston with new single bedroom en-suite accommodation and environments which meet all the modern standards of mental health care.

This is a really exciting time to be joining the in-patient services at LPFT.

A list of current opportunities and more about working in mental health care can be found at www.lpft.nhs.uk/work-for-us