It completes a period of more than a year when Liverpool Community Health has been working with the area’s Clinical Commissioning Groups, NHS England, local authorities and NHS Improvement (formerly the NHS Trust Development Authority) to explore different options to create more joined-up NHS services closer to where people live.

The services which will transfer from LCH include blood testing, community matrons, district nursing, treatment rooms, speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, foot care, adult diabetes and adult dietetics, intravenous fluids therapy and community respiratory care.

Referral routes and contact details will remain the same and, aside from a new logo on appointment letters and buildings, residents using the services should not see any changes.

Following the Mersey Care board decision on 24 May, LCH staff will transfer to Mersey Care and North West Boroughs Healthcare, remaining within the NHS and delivering a high standard of care. They join others such as Talk Liverpool, Ambition Sefton and Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust which quickly became integrated into Mersey Care over recent few years. This is another step towards our goal of continually improving care standards and provides a full care package, looking at physical and mental health together.

Trish Bennett, Mersey Care’s Director of Integration, (pictured above discussing the transaction with LCH staff at Litherland Town Hall) will manage the running of south Sefton Community Services and has been a regular visitor to Sefton to ensure a continuity of care for locals.

More information about LCH on our website

Working Together in the face of Cyber attacks

Many NHS organisations were affected by a spate of cyber attacks which threatened to hold them to ransom by criminal hackers, but swift action by our colleagues at Informatics Merseyside ensured Mersey Care’s networks and its patient information were kept safe.

Although it meant we had to enforce a sudden planned shutdown of our IT systems in the wake of such a concerted threat, we were able to keep working as a 24/7 organisation and it is a credit to all staff that our services continued during the disruption and were largely unaffected.

After the networks were back on-line, the Informatics team continued to ensure frontline staff were supported and clinical staff were prioritised. Laptop clinics to ensure laptops were future-proofed against any potential threat continued in the weeks after the cyber attack and replacement laptops loaned where needed.

Chief Executive Joe Rafferty praised the Informatics teams who worked around the clock when the cyber attack struck, which affected 150 countries worldwide. In the UK, NHS hospitals, pharmacies and GP surgeries were the worst-affected.

He thanked all staff for their resilience and determination in overcoming the temporary IT shutdown, adding: “Possibly the most impressive thing during all the disruption has been how staff and teams have worked together. In some examples, staff have had to improvise, but the important message has been how you have all got together to ‘keep business as usual’ and get the job done.”

Informatics Merseyside is an NHS shared service providing Information Management and Technology services to NHS partner organisations and customers across the regional health and social care economy and is hosted as a body by Mersey Care. Find our more about their services and partners on their website.

Life Rooms Southport

Building on the success of our Life Rooms Walton, Mersey Care has officially opened its new Life Rooms Southport as a centre for learning, recovery, health and wellbeing.

The former Living Well centre in Southport town centre has become a base for a range of life opportunities for our service users, carers and the wider community, challenging stigma and promoting positive mental health and wellbeing.

Importantly, we will be looking to strengthen our links with the local community by building local partnerships with voluntary and third sector groups. Mersey Care hopes the transformation of the building will follow the successful model of Life Rooms in Walton, which has had more than 13,000 visitors since opening its doors a year ago.

Mersey Care’s Director of Social Inclusion and Participation, Michael Crilly, said: “We’re delighted to open Life Rooms in Southport. We’re committed to establishing ourselves very much part of the community and want to work in partnership with the various communities in and around Southport to provide the wellbeing services people want and need.”

Stakeholders are welcome to drop-in to see for themselves the new Life Rooms Southport, situated off Lord Street at: 23 to 25 Scarisbrick Avenue, Southport, PR8 1NW.

Further information about the opening can be found here, and the Life Rooms has its own dedicated with courses and contact details on its website.

Just and Learning Culture

Mersey Care continues to develop its ‘Just and Learning Culture’ as it strives for Perfect Care.

Inspired by tactics used in the airline and oil industries, our Chief Executive Joe Rafferty last year started the debate about how all of Mersey Care’s staff can work together better to improve services. It recognised that sometimes things can go wrong, and while there should always be accountability, a blame culture of ‘who’ rather than ‘what went wrong’ was unhelpful in learning from past incidents and remedying them for the future.

Now a network of trust ‘Just and Learning Culture’ Ambassadors is to be established, meeting every two months to share information, experiences and updates. It’s a different way of working, not relying on hierarchy but really using all our experiences and skills.

Joe Rafferty explained: “A Fair and Just Culture is about learning and we’re looking for people at all levels who can support colleagues in circumstances where concerns should be reported and lessons learnt.”

Our Ambassadors will be much more than a visible presence; they’ll be the people that give credibility to the goals that we set, shape the way in which we learn and demonstrate our commitment to, and value of our workforce. Read more about what a ‘just culture’ means in the CEO’s blog.

Dementia Awareness

It was fitting that in a month that promoted Dementia Awareness (14 to 20 May) that one of Mersey Care’s stalwart service user campaigners, Tommy Dunne, received his British Empire Medal for services to people with dementia and their families in Liverpool. Tommy was at a ceremony attended by the Lord Mayors of Liverpool, Wirral and St Helens and the High Sheriff of Merseyside before being given his medal on behalf of the Queen, from the Lord-Lieutenant of Merseyside.

Mersey Care, which is proud to be a member of Liverpool and Sefton Dementia Action Alliances, worked collaboratively with a number of partners to get the message out during the Alzheimer’s Society-backed campaign week. It affirmed that collectively we must unite against dementia through raising awareness, offering help and understanding, improving care and working towards finding a cure.

A number of awareness and support activities continue to run after the week-long campaign, including a photography exhibition of service users living with dementia at the Museum of Liverpool in collaboration with House of Memories; and dementia café sessions at GIFT Café in Anfield, Liverpool. You can read more about Dementia Awareness Week

Centre for Perfect Care

Our ambition to deliver ‘Perfect Care’ is a systemic approach across all our services and the Centre for Perfect Care was established to help our staff continuously improve the services we provide today, whilst addressing the mental health and wellbeing challenges of the future.

The Centre will also allow the Trust to work in partnership with others – locally, nationally and internationally – to help deliver its mission.

To find out more about the Centre for Perfect Care, supported by a range of programmes that help embed our vision and values into practice, log on to our new Centre for Perfect Care website

Manchester Concert Attack

There has been wide recognition for the way in which the NHS, blue light services and a whole range of people across Manchester and our region came together to support the tragedy at the concert.

Mersey Care was linked in with the NHS response, flown its flags at half mast as a mark of respect and joined in the national show of solidarity with a minute’s silence at 11am on 25 May. Joe Rafferty told staff: “Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this attack.”

Feedback…is there anything you would like to see in future editions of our stakeholder news? Tell us what your special interest in Mersey Care is and how we can help keep you informed – simply ‘reply’ to communications@merseycare.nhs.uk