It’s been a huge week for us and I would like to thank everybody for their input and support over the two days of industrial action.

First, thanks to everyone who changed roles and swapped rotas to ensure we were  able to continue to provide safe, quality care from CHFT. That was very important. This Trust has a real reputation for working together and maintaining our "patient first" pillar this last week makes me very proud to be part of such a team.

Secondly, to everyone in the planning process and I include colleagues in our hospitals, in our community services and in our partner organisations. This has been a huge commitment for several months relying on patch-wide cooperation to get our plans to the stage where we were assured we had everything in place; the fact that everything ran smoothly reflected the level of planning undertaken so thank you.

With regret, we did have to cancel some appointments and operations, yet we tried to keep these to a minimum and will be endeavouring to get them rescheduled as soon as we can. For those colleagues in the booking office a particular thank you as there has been a lot of additional work over all of the Industrial Action days which you have undertaken with real commitment and compassion ensuring the messages to patients reflected our values.

For this week, to everybody, thank you

CHFT Chief Operating Officer

Helen Barker