So far, more than 1,500 people – including service users, carers, staff, governors, and partners – have taken part in the Big Conversation, sharing where they think ELFT can improve, as well as their hopes for the next five years.

Now, we’re taking the next step, and we’d love your input.

This short survey highlights some of the key themes we’ve heard so far, and asks for your views on the big issues we’re facing.

It is open to anyone who has already been involved in any Big Conversation discussions and to all other members of the ELFT family - whether you work for ELFT, use our services, are a governor or member, or are one of our partners.

Do please take part in the survey. Your voice matters.

Your answers will be anonymous (unless you choose to share personal details), and the survey should take less than 15 minutes to complete.

Our new strategy will reflect the Government's new 10 Year Health Plan for England which sets out a bold, ambitious and necessary new course for the NHS. 

Through the 'three shifts' – from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to prevention – we will personalise care, give more power to service users and carers, and ensure that the best of the NHS is available to us all.

Why is strategy important? 
A useful definition of strategy that we are using to guide this refresh process is borrowed from an organisation called Kaleidoscope Health and Care –

“A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim. Good strategy does this through a clear understanding of where you are and want to be, a set of overall guiding principles, and coherent actions to focus energy” 

Strategy helps organisations by: 

• Focusing purpose and direction (including giving direction for decision-making, and renewing purpose and values)
• Accelerating ability to change (including building capacity and capability, and innovating)
• Energising culture and relationships (including role-modelling our values, making hard and difficult decisions openly and being genuine about what matters most)
• Listening to those who matter most (including finding diverse perspectives, and empowering staff, citizens and partners)

Strategy also helps individuals by:

• Connecting what staff do every day in their jobs to a wider sense of purpose
• Helping staff to make decisions within a framework, rather than leaving them to navigate challenges on their own
• Encouraging collaboration between individuals and teams in pursuit of a collective vision 

What has been achieved through the existing strategy? 
Our current organisational strategy was last refreshed in 2021. Since then, we have made good progress in our mission to improve the quality of life for all we serve. For example, there has been considerable progress in helping people to understand and identify opportunities to improve population health across the trust. We have also made excellent progress in improving service user and staff experience in inpatient settings through our work on therapeutic engagement and observations. 

We have captured some important learning from our approach to strategy delivery over the past five years that we will be keeping in mind as we proceed: 

• We can achieve significant improvements for the people we serve and for our staff when we coordinate efforts and energy
• Not everything needs a highly structured approach to be successful
• However, if we define specific strategic objectives more clearly in the future, we will be able to focus improvement work over time more effectively
• Linked to this, we can be clearer about what we are aiming for and how we will know when we get there 

How will the new strategy be developed? 
The new strategy will be formed through The Big Conversation programme, which was also used to develop the Trust strategy for 2021-2026. 

The Big Conversation process has three stages: 

1.  Engagement workshops. We have four questions we are asking people about their views on our organisational strengths, the challenges we’ll face, what our priorities should be and what people hope we will achieve. This includes asking team leaders to run sessions in their team meetings.
2. Surveys to help us to understand in more detail what people mean by different things. For example, in our last strategy refresh, lots of people talked about ‘getting the basics right’ but we didn’t spend enough time understanding what people meant by this.
3. A deliberative group. A representative group of staff and service users from across the trust will come together to deliberate on the feedback we’ve received and to help generate a shortlist of goals / objectives that the strategy should focus on. We’ll be inviting people to apply to join this group. We expect it to meet in October. 

What questions are you asking through the Big Conversation workshops? 
We are asking all stakeholders to discuss these four questions through our engagement workshops:

• What strengths should we build on as an organisation over the next five years?
• What do you think are the main challenges the trust will face over the next five years?
• What should the trust focus on over the next five years to improve the quality of life for all we serve?
• What are your hopes for what we will achieve over the next five years? 

Can I get involved? 
The Trust wants to encourage involvement of all the groups listed below in shaping the new strategy: 

• ELFT staff
• Service users
• Carers
• Governors
• Members
• Partner organisations in north east London (NEL) and in Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK)

 Details of engagement webinars are available on this page and you can also use the contact form below for any questions or queries. 

Will the strategy reflect the national 10-year health plan for England? 
The Government's new 10-Year Health Plan for England sets out a bold, ambitious and necessary new course for the NHS. Our strategy will reflect the 'three shifts' outlined in the plan – from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to prevention – so we can personalise care, give more power to service users and carers, and ensure that the best of the NHS is available to us all.

As the Trust’s Big Conversation to help us develop a new five-year strategy gets into full swing, we publish our Strategy Impact Report to set out the progress we have made over the last five years.

The document has been produced to reflect on change across the organisation over the last five years and to help colleagues, service users and partners consider what our priorities should be for the next five years.

The report highlights progress across the strategy’s four strategic outcomes: improved population health, improved experience of care, improved staff experience and improved value.

Key achievements include the formation of a people participation (PP) directorate, ELFT becoming the first NHS ‘Marmot Trust’ to test the boundaries of what an NHS Trust can do to tackle some of the drivers of poor health, PCREF (Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework), applying quality improvement (QI) to all that we do and the development of integrated care.

You can download a copy of the impact report at the bottom of this page.

Here is our weekly update on Big Conversation progress: