View our Patient Engagement and Experience Strategy..

At Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust we aim to provide the highest quality healthcare at all times.

We strive for excellence and are committed to learning from and leading best practice to make sure we are delivering quality care. We aim to have a workforce representative of the communities we serve so we’re the best place for our patients and our people.

As the NHS evolves to meet new challenges and we continue to transform our services and patient care around the needs of our local population, we recognise successful delivery of these changes relies on our people.

Our People, Our Future sets out the strategic aims and objectives for our people over the next five years. Without their dedication, commitment, care and compassion we are not able to deliver the care our patients deserve.

Trust’s key principles of safeguarding: Joint position statement 2023-2025

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT) strives to work with multiagency partners to keep adults at risk, children, young people and unborns safe. Living in safety is a basic human right. People with vulnerability may need assistance and advocates to ensure their safety and well-being. BTHFT will ensure that there are systems and processes in place to promote the safeguarding and well-being of all patients. In line with the Trust values of we care, we value people, we are one team, all safeguarding activity and plans will be person centred/child focused with the staff recognition of Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility.

Provide outstanding care for patients

The Trust has effective executive team oversight of safeguarding business within the Trust for the best interest of the patient, led by the Chief Nurse as the Lead for Safeguarding with clear lines of responsibility.  The Trust will ensure that dedicated safeguarding teams are in place and fully staffed. The Board of Directors will receive an annual report and interim updates. There are transparent governance arrangements to provide robust internal challenge. This is assessed as part of the ‘safe’ domain of CQC inspections. In addition BTHFT have comprehensive Safeguarding Children and Adult Procedures, promoted across the Trust.

Deliver our financial plan and key performance targets

The Safeguarding Children and Adult teams are held to account via the Quality and Patient Safety Academy and monitored through the Integrated Safeguarding Committee. Key performance indicators are centred around staff training compliance, safeguarding team partnership meeting attendance and access to safeguarding supervision.

Be in the top 20% of NHS employers

The Trust is committed to ensuring staff are supported in their safeguarding duty. The Trust has up to date safeguarding policies in place to guide staff. These are regularly reviewed. The safeguarding policies are in accordance with the West Yorkshire Safeguarding Children and Adults procedures. All new staff are required to attend a corporate induction programme at the start of their employment which includes mandatory face to face safeguarding training. The Trust has a robust Recruitment and Selection Policy and Employment Checks Policy which fully complies with the NHS Employment Check Standards and DBS checks. There is also a clear Allegation Management Policy.

Be a continually learning organisation

The Trust continues to be committed to developing a culture of learning. The Safeguarding Children and Adults teams provide a training strategy in line with national guidance with designated levels of training for all staff dependent on their role. Training is provided via eLearning and face to face sessions with a varied programme informed by learning from local and national serious case reviews and serious incidents. Regular newsletters are circulated to all staff and further safeguarding information is available to all staff through the Safeguarding Children and Adults webpages on the Trust intranet. There is an audit strategy to enable a measurement of effective activity and to identify gaps in staff knowledge and service provision.

Collaborate effectively with local and regional partners

The Trust is an active partner in Bradford Safeguarding Adults Board and the Bradford Safeguarding Children Partnership, and holds membership on all sub groups. This includes attendance at the Bradford Domestic and Sexual Violence strategic board. BTHFT is committed to working collaboratively with other agencies, and sharing information in a safe and appropriate manner to safeguarding vulnerable patients.

Following a requirement from the NHS Chief Nursing Officer England and the Care Quality Commission, all hospitals are required to publish information about the number of nursing and midwifery staff working on each ward, together with the percentage of shifts meeting safe staffing guidelines.

This initiative is part of the NHS response to the Francis report which called for greater openness and transparency in the health service.

We take the care of our patients very seriously and already have a number of mechanisms in place to ensure that our wards are safely staffed, including displaying information for patients and visitors in all of our wards using the Read All About Us Boards. This shows the planned and actual staffing available at the start of every shift.

We have recently reviewed our staffing establishments. Each month, our staffing levels are discussed in public at our Trust board meetings and these papers are available on our website.

Download the monthly nurse staffing data board reports.

Quality Accounts can be downloaded from our ‘Reports and accounts‘ page.

Improving the quality of care that we deliver to our patients is our highest priority. We have a formal programme of work to help us make the already excellent care that we deliver even better. We have a number of ongoing projects involving many different wards and departments which aim to make our care safer, more efficient and ensure we provide the best possible experience for our patients. Current projects include:

• Improving the care of deteriorating patients
• Reducing pressure ulcers
• Improving the safety of surgery
• Increasing the learning from incidents

Many of the projects that we run use a recognised approach initially developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, but now used around the world by many improvement bodies and NHS trusts.

The first of the tools within this approach is the Breakthrough Series Collaborative. This is a simple project structure which brings together teams from across the Trust to work on a common problem. The teams focus on learning how to systematically make and evaluate change with the support of facilitators who are trained in the approach used.

The second of the tools used is the Model for Improvement. This is a simple framework which helps teams to plan the improvements that they want to make. The Model for Improvement is made up of four parts:

• What are we trying to accomplish? An important step in improving is having an aim, this sounds simple but is often missed. It helps teams describe what they want to achieve and when they want to do it by.
• How will we know whether a change is an improvement? A key part of improvement is understanding whether your change is having the effect that you thought it would. Using and understanding measures means you can quickly spread changes that are effective and forget about those that are not.
• What changes can we make that will result in improvement? Our staff, who all work in busy wards and departments, almost always know what the issues are and have excellent ideas as to what the solutions to problems should be. This tool helps them to test out those ideas and prove that they work.
• Testing a change. We use a simple process to test changes on a small scale. This helps us to understand whether they are likely to be effective without causing disruption. Successful changes can then be developed on a wider scale.

Find out what we are doing on equality and diversity to improve employment opportunities and services in Bradford District for all staff and patients.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent health and adult social care regulator. They monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure the fundamental standards of quality and safety are met.

Learn about our CQC ratings.

View our dementia strategy 2024-2027.

BTHFT Dementia Strategy 2024-2027 takes its lead from the national priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia 2020 (2015), the local picture outlined in the Bradford Dementia Needs Assessment (2015) and Bradford District’s Dementia Strategy aligning to the strategic direction and action driven by the NHS Dementia Well Pathway, supporting the Trust’s mission to provide the highest quality care at all times.