Welcome to our Membership page, you may remember that we spoke about our goal to improve how we communicate with you; whether that be meetings, how we engage our local community, how our Governors can hear from you – in short all things membership.

We were really pleased that some of our members were able to meet with us at our ‘Conversation’ meetings held in January. They shared their thoughts on ELFT Membership, what it means to them and what it could mean to others. We have also held the three sessions of our Membership Task and Finish Group. It had representatives from across our Trust, including members, governors and service users. We are co-producing our new Membership Engagement plan to ensure that our plan considers both our members and the wider population that we serve. Our current membership strategy is very lengthy. Our new plan will fit on one page and we hope to ‘talk’ to everyone.

We will share the final plan with you and some plans for the year in the Summer edition of Trusttalk.

Our Governors have been busy. Along with Membership planning, they have undertaken the important role of appointing our Trust Chair. As you will have seen, Eileen Taylor was appointed as our Chair with effect from 1 January 2023. It is a Joint Chair role - Eileen is also Chair of NELFT.

We also held our first in person Council of Governor meeting on 9 March at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. It was the first time we had held this meeting face to face since early 2020.

It was heart-warming to be back in a room with our Governors, some of whom we hadn’t seen in three years. We also said our official good bye to Mark Lam, our previous Chair, who left the Trust in 2022. We hadn’t had the opportunity to say goodbye. Our next Council of Governor meeting will be held on 11 May 2023 – why not join us and come along and meet your Governors.

Caroline Ogunsola – our Lead Governor tweeted – ‘We met today face to face for the first time in months. What a joy to see my fellow fabulous #Governor, our fantastic NEDs, and most importantly it was a joy to see people in flesh’

You can see photos of some of our Governors and board members discussing in groups what we need to consider when we say ‘getting the basics right’

However, if you would like to contact us or your Governors in the mean time you can call us 0800 032 7297 or email elft.membership@nhs.net.

Our usual plea - Help us Save Pennies
As you are no doubt aware, costs for the NHS (and all of us) are increasing. We are trying to make sure that we make the best use of our money. So, if Trusttalk is posted to you, please let us have your email address. You will still hear from us but it will by email. We would prefer to send you an email version of Trusttalk. Not only will we save trees, we will save on postage costs! So please, if you have an email address - let us know. You can email us at: elft.membership@nhs.net please include your full name and address.

……or if you no longer wish to hear from us (and that’s ok), please let us know using the same email address or give us a call on 0800 032 7297