Trust Chair Crishni Waring delivers presentation at Commonwealth Civil Society Policy Forum 2025
At the annual Commonwealth Civil Society Policy Forum, Trust Chair, Crishni Waring, delivered a presentation to health and social care colleagues from across the globe.
The keynote, titled 'Engaged and resilient workforce through distributed leadership', told the story of NHFT's workforce journey over a period of ten years, spotlighting our focus on leadership and culture. The talk contributed to the Forum's main theme of a resilient and sufficient health and wellbeing workforce.
Hosted by the Commonwealth Health Professions and Partners Alliance (CHPA), each year colleagues develop recommendations from Commonwealth civil society. The Alliance brings together nurses, midwives, social workers, pharmacists, doctors and related professionals. This year, contributions came from the World Health Organisation, Australia, Bahamas, South Africa, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and more.
Throughout the keynote speech, Crishni explored NHFT's focus on everyone being a leader and how this is a central driver to developing culture and improving our quality of care. She discussed a number of initiatives that the Trust has supported to celebrate colleagues and promote physical and mental wellbeing.
David Jones, CHPA Treasurer, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Organisation for Social Work and former NHFT Governor, supported the organisation of the Forum. David commented: Crishni's presentation presented the challenges facing UK health providers and the approach to the workforce adopted by NHFT. She showed that the positive working environment approach being advocated by the Alliance is already evident in the way NHFT staff have been able to face challenges and make improvements for service users, including improved recruitment and retention.
The talk gave hope to health professionals and managers around the Commonwealth that improvement is possible, even in difficult times. Crishni reinforced the messages about what creates a positive working environment which supports health professionals and creates excellent services.
The ideas discussed at the Forum contribute to the annual Commonwealth Health Ministers' meeting (CHMM), which brings together Commonwealth health ministers, senior government officials and global health leaders. The 37th session of this meeting begins on 19 May 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Forum reached around 1000 virtual attendees, and you can watch Crishni's appearance in this video from the timestamp 1:16:14.