Freedom to Speak Up
The Trust is committed to an open and transparent culture; one in which all staff members including sub-contractors and volunteers feel empowered to raise concerns, with confidence that these concerns will be acted upon and without detriment for speaking up.
Staff can raise concerns about risk, malpractice or wrong doing that they think is harming the service such as:
- Unsafe patient care
- Unsafe working conditions
- Inadequate induction or training for staff
- Lack of or poor response to a reported patient safety incident
- Suspicious of fraud (which can also be reported to our local counter fraud team)
- A bullying culture
It is important to emphasise that staff will not be penalised for raising concerns. We will not tolerate the harassment or bullying of anyone raising a concern. Nor will we tolerate any attempt to bully anyone into not raising a concern.
We have a number of ways to raise a concern:
- Do it anonymously – contact: Speak in Confidence
- Do it confidentially – Speak to your Line Manager or call the Raising Concerns hotline on 0151 430 1777
- Contact on our Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.
Meet our Freedom to Speak Up Guardians
The Freedom to Speak Up Guardians have a role in being independent and impartial, ensuring the focus is on the safety issue that has been raised, investigated and addressed if found to be true. The Guardian also ensures that there are no repercussions for the individual who raised the concern. If an individual does not feel they can approach their line manager, lead clinician or raising concerns champion about their concern, we have appointed Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.
