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Visit to Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust

4 July 2025

NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery visits Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust.

  • Social care

  • Mental health

At the end of June, Saffron Cordery visited Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, at their headquarters in Maidstone.

She received a very warm welcome from Dr Jackie Craissati, trust chair, and deputy chief executive Donna Hayward-Sussex.

Saffron said: "I was really struck by the trust's commitment to meeting the very wide-ranging needs of the diverse communities that it serves. Kent embraces coastal, rural and industrial elements with huge variation within the county in terms of its population's health and life expectancy."

The trust, which faces the challenges of timely patient discharge and the need for greater capital investment, is rightly proud of a number of its services:

πŸ”΅ Their community and inpatient perinatal services.

πŸ”΅ The delivery of Safe Havens working with a local voluntary sector organisation, Mental Health Matters. The service is co-located in the grounds of the acute trust.

πŸ”΅ Its mental health rapid response, working with South East Coast Ambulance Service and seeing pleasingly low conversion rates.

"The highlight of the afternoon was the visit to Ruby Ward. Built with dormitory ward elimination funding, Ruby Ward has only been open a year. It is a 16-bedded ward, offering inpatient care for older women with acute mental health difficulties.

"Each of its rooms is en-suite and it has a number of accessible garden areas, as well as the soon-to-be-opened Oakwood Nature Recovery Garden. While the building itself offered a highly therapeutic environment – calm, light and airy – with the space for a host of therapeutic activities, the dedication of staff to the well-being of Ruby's patients most definitely shone through."