Northamptonshire welcomes NHS strategy chief
NHS England's national Chief Strategy Officer Chris Hopson has paid a visit to Northamptonshire to learn more about NHFT’s innovation and collaboration.
Colleagues welcomed Chris to the county on Friday 19 January, where he first visited Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust's (NHFT) Highfield Clinical Care Centre to see some of our innovative mental health services – 
including the Mental Health Number telephone service (run by Mind and NHFT), the Crisis Response Unit vehicle launched in 2023, and the Acute Liaison Mental Health Service.
Chris met with Anne Rackham, Adam Smith and Christine Edwards, as well as meeting other NHFT colleagues working in mental health.
Next on the agenda was a tour of Northampton General Hospital (NGH), where he was shown the state-of-the-art surgical robot, which is being used to support life-saving cancer surgery, and the one-stop gynaecology clinic. He was also given the lowdown on an award-winning sustainability project to reduce the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) at the hospital.
From there it was off to the Hope Centre in Northampton to see work to address health inequalities in action, with a public health team from West Northamptonshire Council delivering health checks and vaccinations for homeless people and rough sleepers.
Finally, Chris then visited the Turn Furlong Recovering Independence Bed Unit, where clinical staff from NHFT and social care staff from WNC provide collaborative short-term care to support people in their return home after a hospital stay.
Anne Rackham, Chief Operating Officer for NHFT, said: “It was a fantastic opportunity to share, as a system, the work achieved in our health pathways in the community and hospitals. We were able to reflect the importance of holistic care, and we were pleased to share our Mental Health Crisis pathways and work achieved in partnership with the voluntary sector.”
Pictured top: Christine Edwards, Chris Hopson, Anne Rackham and Adam Smith