Who we are

Trust Strategy 2021 – 2026

Better Care Together – with you, for you

Our five-year strategy for 2021 to 2026 will take us on an exciting journey. We pledge to put people at the heart of our services, focusing on personalised care by asking ‘what matters to you?’ rather than ‘what is the matter with you?’

Our Mission is:

Enabling People to Live the Best Life They Can

Our Vision is:

Working Together to Provide Outstanding Care

This journey will include:

  • Developing services around the needs of our communities
  • Tackling health inequalities – unfair and avoidable differences in health caused by things like unemployment,
    poor education, race, disability, and where people live
  • Using technology to improve access and choice in how patients receive care
  • Improving our buildings to make them more efficient and a better environment for our patients and staff
  • Promoting quality improvement and innovation
  • Working towards university status with our Gloucestershire health and education partners
  • Being an environmentally proactive organisation working with our communities to tackle the health impact of
    pollution and climate change
  • Embedding co-production and engagement
How we developed our strategy

We formed in October 2019, following the merger of two strong, high performing NHS Trusts. We began co-producing this strategy with our colleagues, people who use our services, and through listening to our other stakeholders and partners by developing our Trust Values before our Trust was established. We commissioned an independent perception audit to hear the views and opinions of a wide range of our stakeholders, including the local authorities, local Primary Care Networks (PCNs) which are made up of local GPs, the voluntary sector, governors and members.

The overall view was that the newly formed Trust was in a great position to make a real impact and have a leading role in taking forward our health and care system in partnership with those who use it. Our development work was temporarily put on hold while our teams and services concentrated on responding to the Covid pandemic, but engagement picked up again at the beginning of 2021.

This strategy reflects what matters most to the people we’ve spoken to and sets out our ambitious but realistic plans for the next five years. In line with our values, we will continue to listen to and work in partnership with colleagues, patients, carers and our communities to ensure that we deliver ‘Better Care Together’.

Our Four Strategic Aims
We have considered the national and local challenges that we need to address and how we think we can best meet them. As such, we have identified four strategic aims:

  • High Quality Care
  • Better Health
  • Great Place to Work
  • Sustainability

Each strategic aim has an overall goal and a number of milestones beneath it.

Strategic Aim One: High Quality Care

We will deliver safe, effective, accessible services that meet individual needs. We will work with people who use our services, with carers, and with our colleagues to improve services through co-production, peer support and personalised care. We will constantly listen, innovate, and learn from others to ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes.

For the people who use our services, high quality care means receiving timely, safe and effective care, every time and as close to home as possible. Our Quality Strategy will set out the framework for driving further improvements to deliver High Quality Care.

Our goals are:
  • The people who use our services and their carers report high levels of satisfaction and ‘being heard’
  • We co-produce quality outcome measures that demonstrate good care
  • We achieve an overall CQC rating of ‘Outstanding’
Our High Quality Care Objectives are to:
  • Develop and embed our Quality Improvement approach to
    ensure continuous learning and improvement
  • Develop our approach to co-production, personalisation, and the Triangle of Care
  • Ensure robust quality assurance processes are in place,
    helping us to learn when we get things wrong and embed
    evidence-based practice

Strategic Aim Two: Better Health

Better Health means we will work together with people who use and work in our services to meet the needs of our diverse communities with services that are culturally sensitive and focus on early intervention and prevention.
We will be an active partner at both a locality and system level to tackle the root causes of health inequality and use information, evidence and experience to guide us.

Achieving Better Health and reducing health inequalities is not something we can achieve alone. It is influenced by many other factors such as housing and educational issues. We will continue to make the best use of our resources; providing interventions that have been proven to make a difference but we must also work with our system partners to deliver the priorities identified in both this strategy and those in the aligned Health and Wellbeing strategy.

We need to continue to find alternative ways to ensure we reach out to those communities that don’t access our services through our traditional routes and maximise access to all of our communities.

Our Goal is to ensure that we:
  • Work in partnership with our communities to improve the health outcomes of those who are most disadvantaged
Our Better Health Objectives are to:
  • Identify inequalities in our service delivery and develop targeted initiatives to improve them
  • Further integrate our physical, mental health and learning disability services by working closely with partners to improve experience and outcomes
  • Use Population Health Management and health data at a locality level to identify how people and communities can best be supported
  • Implement the universal Personalised Care Model, the Peer Support Worker Model and develop a clear approach to co-production across our services

Strategic Aim Three: Great Place to Work

Our goal is to ensure that we have:
  • A healthy and happy high-quality workforce, performing well in all local and national performance
    standards
Our Great Place to Work objectives are to:
  • Focus on recruitment, retention and talent management at an individual and team level, working in
    partnership to secure our future workforce supply
  • Invest in our health and wellbeing offers to ensure our colleagues are healthy, happy and that our
    workplace is safe
  • Create an organisational culture that is welcoming, builds and celebrates inclusivity and diversity and
    provides a sense of belonging and trust
  • Ensure our colleagues are heard, valued and influential in the organisation and wider system
  • Promote flexible working, digital enablement and innovative roles that embrace new ways of working
  • Work closely with system partners and education providers to optimise funding and training that enables
    workforce transformation

Strategic Aim Four: Sustainability

Our goal is to:
  • Demonstrate that we are reducing our total carbon footprint
Our Sustainability Objectives are:
  • Understand our baseline position in all aspects of sustainable development and set clear and
    measurable targets
  • Take positive action to reduce our carbon footprint and improve air quality
  • Take forward Digital by Design to transform our service delivery.
  • Maximise our position as a major contributor to our local economy – promoting local, high quality employment opportunities and investment to add wider value across Gloucestershire
Delivering Our Strategy

This strategy is ambitious and we recognise that there is much for us to do, but it is also measured and we will be realistic. We are confident that this strategy will help us achieve our vision and enable us to support people to live well.

We will deliver our strategy through our Enabling Strategies and a number of strategic programmes of work, which will focus on delivering our four strategic aims.

Quality Strategy

We place quality at the heart of everything we do in order to deliver services and make a positive difference to our communities.

Click here to read our Quality Strategy.

People Strategy

We want to create a culture that truly enables colleagues to deliver the best possible care and support services in whatever role or place they work. Compassionate and accountable leadership is key and we need to ensure that we develop both our current and our future leaders to ensure we drive this forward.

Click here to read our People Strategy.

Digital Strategy

Digital technology will be a key driver and enabler for the Trust over the next five years. It will help us be efficient and effective, make better use of our precious workforce and help improve the experience and outcomes for service users, their families and the wider community.

Click here to read our Digital Strategy.

Estates Strategy

We deliver services from over 140 sites across Gloucestershire and we need to ensure that these offer a good quality, therapeutic environment.

To read our Estates Strategy click here: estates-strategy-v00r04-web

Research and Innovation Strategy

We are well placed to continue to work in partnership across Gloucestershire and the wider South West to ensure we build a strong reputation in running and contributing to local, regional and national clinical research trials and clinical audit.

Full details of our Research and Innovation Strategy will be published here. 

Finance Strategy

Our best value resourcing approach underpins the delivery of our four strategic aims and all of our enabling strategies and strategic objectives.

Full details of our Finance Strategy will be published here.

Sustainability Strategy
Our three-year Green Plan 2022-25, sets out goals and targets to help us reduce our impact on the environment, as well as saving money and improving the local communities in which we serve.

We have been working hard to be a more sustainable Trust for many years. We have embedded sustainability as one of our four strategic aims, reduced our energy consumption through switching lights to LED, generated electricity through the installation of solar panels, created two NHS forests to protect biodiversity and enable nature-based solutions to care and supported wider work in the NHS long-term plan, such as care closer to home.

This strategy sets out our commitment to the national NHS net zero targets, sustainable models of care, procurement, waste management, recycling and systems leadership.

Read our Sustainability Strategy

Read our Full Strategy

Our full strategy can be read using the links below. There is a pdf version and an Easy Read version.

You can also request a postal version of our strategy by contacting our Communications Team:

  • Email ghccomms@ghc.nhs.uk
  • Write to Communications, Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS FT, Edward Jenner Court, 1010 Pioneer Avenue, Gloucester, GL3 4AW
  • Telephone 0300 4218 100

If you would like a translation, large print or another accessible format, please contact us using the details above. 

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