James' Journal

Hi everyone,

I am writing this week’s journal on Sunday, from the Labour Party Conference in a very wet Liverpool – I’ve just got back to my hotel after a great day of discussions having splashed through the city in very heavy rain. It is good to change into some dry socks!

The conference panel we hosted alongside Marie Curie and Hospice UK was a great success. Panelists included Dr Laura Chapman, who is Medical Director for Marie Curie in the North West; Dr Annie Williamson from the Institute for Public Policy Research; Professor Adam Gordon, who is President of the British Geriatric Society; Nathanial Dye, who spoke about his lived experience of being diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer; Ashley Dalton MP; and Dr Simon Opher MP.

We had a great discussion on the need for the debate on assisted dying to be set within the context of what good looks like for palliative and end-of-life care. We touched on the impact that good care can have on people and the need for this to be expanded to meet the needs of a wider population. We had good consensus on the need to shift the conversation on dying to enable more people to understand the issues involved and to plan more effectively for death.

It provided a good opportunity to showcase our work to a packed room and we have generated several follow up opportunities with key people we met at the event.

Thank you very much to Emma, John and Leanne from the Influencing team for all the work involved in setting this up and a special thanks too to John for kindly gifting me his Sue Ryder pin badge, which I will now be wearing wherever I go!

I am staying at the conference on Monday for a series of meetings with the CEOs of The Nuffield Trust, Social Care Institute for Excellence, and the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. Then back home on Monday evening for a day of one-to-ones and our regular ELT meeting on Tuesday.

I am then off to Cheltenham for two days with ELT and our Trustee Board. We are visiting Sue Ryder Leckhampton Court Hospice for the board meeting on Wednesday, then having a strategy session on Thursday where we will take them through the plans we shared with SLT earlier this month. While I am mentioning Trustees, we have welcomed two great new Trustees to our board, Charles and Heather, who bring excellent experience to help us during this next phase of development.

Last week, it was great to be at Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice on Wednesday to chat to staff there as we get ready to reopen our inpatient unit. Thank you to everyone who attended the session and to all there for the significant amount of work being undertaken to get the building ready for reopening. It was great to get a tour of the newly refurbished patient rooms with fresh paint, flooring and big new TVs, as well as see how the roof works are getting on. I was particularly impressed with the massive effort undertaken by our in-house maintenance team, who have been working tirelessly to get the redecoration and refit completed – thanks so much to Eugene and the team for your efforts with this. You can check out a few pictures on my social media feeds.

I also had the privilege of visiting our shop in Meanwood to meet staff and volunteers. What a great store and team there – I managed to make myself a little bit useful as well by helping a customer load an impressive dolls house purchase into her car with Janet, our Retail Sales Manager.

I am rounding off the week in the London office and hoping that by the end of the week I will have had the opportunity of decent coffee – I think the quality of coffee at the Labour Conference perhaps set an all-time low bar for me – onwards and upwards!

Have a great week everyone.

James