Board to Ward November 2025
In November's Board to Ward we share three highlights:
Safeguarding with the Sycamore Team
What do the Sycamore team do?
Sarah's story: Please note that the names and some details in this story have been changed and anonymised to protect the identity of the individual, however this story provides an understanding of the type of care Sycamore Team provide.
Sarah is a 24-year-old woman who booked her third pregnancy at approximately 8 weeks gestation. She has a complex history of trauma, illicit substance use and previous involvement with safeguarding services. Her first two children were adopted due to significant concerns about substance misuse and non-engagement with services. When Sarah became pregnant again, she disclosed ongoing illicit substance use and challenges with her mental health. These factors placed her and her unborn baby at high risk of poor perinatal outcomes. This pregnancy also marked a turning point, a moment where co-ordinated, compassionate and trauma informed care made a difference.
From early pregnancy, Sarah was transferred to the Sycamore Team to ensure continuity of care. Recognising the complexity of her needs, the team worked closely with her to build trust, something she had previously found incredibly difficult to achieve. Sarah received onward referrals to: specialist substance misuse services, perinatal mental health support, children's social care. Initially engagement was sporadic. Sarah often felt overwhelmed and fearful about the involvement of services, but the team persisted with gentle patient centred approaches - flexible appointments and non-judgemental conversations. Over time, Sarah built trust with her midwife and was able to see that professionals around her wanted to support her. She engaged well with substance misuse services and stabilised on a methadone programme.
Sarah's pregnancy progressed well and she approached birth with a support network around her, something she had never experienced before. Baby Jacob was born safely at 39 weeks with her Sycamore midwife present to support Sarah. A key moment in her journey was the decision, jointly planned with her and partner agencies for a residential placement in a mother and baby focused facility. This provided Sarah with a safe environment and ongoing structured specialist support. Sarah described this time as the first time someone saw her instead of her problems.
For the first time someone saw me instead of my problems. They believed in me, and I would never have been able to achieve what I have without my midwife
In 2024-2025, the team supported 410 families. Each midwife holds approximately 25-30 patients at any one time, although caseload numbers have steadily increased over the last 2 years. The team have strong working relationships with a number of partner agencies such as: family hubs, family nurse partnership, public health nurses, domestic abuse and substance misuse support services, perinatal mental health, children's and adult's social care to name a few and have attended 655 multi-agency meetings in the last year.
Continuity of care provides midwives with the ability to truly understand the lived experience of the unborn child and family. By walking alongside families over time, midwives can gain a deep insight into the environment a baby will be born into, the challenges and strengths within the family network, and the support required for them to thrive. Higher levels of engagement are observed when patients can build trusting relationships with their midwife and are more likely to disclose a deterioration in mental health, or domestic abuse when they feel safe, and heard. The Sycamore team provides every family the opportunity to give their baby the best start in life.
How are we doing for our patients?
For our maternity patients
There is good news. Following a maternity review and reset meeting with colleagues from Devon Integrated Care Board, the regional team, the Local Maternity and Neonatal System, and the national Maternity Safety Support Programme (MSSP), it has been confirmed that UHP will exit the MSSP programme by the end of the year, with ongoing progress monitored by the regional team. This reflects the progress made in the maternity service.
If you are a patient needing urgent or emergency care
In Urgent and Emergency Care, the overall picture has been influenced by increased demand following the recent opening of Dartmoor Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC), increased ambulance attendances, and the implementation of the enforced rapid release of ambulance crews from the Emergency Department at 45 minutes. Combined activity across the Emergency Department, UTC Cumberland and UTC Dartmoor increased by 68 attendances per day (+15%) between August and September 2025, almost double the seasonal increase seen the previous year. The type of patients presenting to the Emergency Department have become more acute (unwell) over the same period. Whilst waits in the newly opened Dartmoor UTC have been excellent (98% of patients treated within 4hrs), the anticipated improvement in waits in the main Emergency Department has not materialised (40.6% of patients seen and treated within 4 hours compared to a plan of 51.8% plan). We are focusing on improving flow, using the virtual wards, alternative services to admission for patients and increasing the number of patients discharged at the weekend by 50.
If you are a patient with suspected cancer
80.9% of suspected cancer patients received their diagnosis within 28-days of referral (28-Day Faster Diagnosis Standard) in October 2025, achieving the national target (80.0%) but failing to achieve our operating plan trajectory of 84.6%.
If you are a patient waiting for a diagnostic test
Most patients waited less than 6 weeks for their scan or test. 18.0% of UHP's diagnostic waiting list had waited 6+ weeks for their diagnostic test at the end of October 2025 against an improvement trajectory of 10.6%. UHP performed better than the latest available national (21.9%) and NHS Devon (36.0%) performance positions for patients waiting longer than 6 weeks.
Working with partners for better long term outcomes
New Educational Health and Wellbeing Hub
Our Chairman James Brent and Chief Executive Neil Macdonald attended the launch of the new Health and Wellbeing Hub at Plymouth Marjon University. This state-of-the-art £5.8m facility features a simulation hospital ward, a simulation community care suite, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) training spaces, IT suites, a Speech & Language Therapy dysphasia kitchen, and classrooms all designed to enhance clinical training and drive innovation. It will help train healthcare workers of the future.
Coming together with other big institutions to tackle challenges in Plymouth
Together with the other large anchor institutions in Plymouth - Babcock International, Plymouth City Council and the University of Plymouth - we have signed a pioneering Civic Engagement Agreement . At the heart of the Agreement is a shared belief that the complex challenges facing Plymouth, such as job accessibility, health inequality, economic inactivity and skills, can best be addressed through collective action. The members of the Plymouth CIVIC Large Anchor Collaborative are working on a number of initiatives to take collaborative action and are agreeing a co-ordinated plan to share these. We are also working with Team Plymouth to help identify priority social value impact projects* for Plymouth that can be included in procurement tenders for the 10% social value weighted element of contract delivery. This will ensure that social value creation is what the city needs, responding to city challenges.
*Examples of social value might include requiring a supplier to
- provide local training, apprenticeships or employment
- support local voluntary/charitable organisations
- work to support sustainability and the environment
Thanks for reading. Every month our Board leaders meet in public.
