Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Freedom to Speak Up Review

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The Freedom to Speak Up Review was a review into whistleblowing in the NHS in England. It was announced on 24 June 2014 and it was chaired by Sir Robert Francis. The review was originally expected to report in November 2014 but took longer because of a huge volume of input material: 17,500 online responses and 600 postal responses.

Contents

The report was published on 11 February 2015.

Recommendations

Francis outlined twenty principles and associated actions, then concluded by making just two recommendations:

  1. for all NHS organisations and regulators to implement all the principles and actions;
  2. for the Secretary of State to review progress annually.

The twenty principles to allow a consistent approach to raising concerns, while still allowing some flexibility, included:

  • Culture of raising concerns - to make raising issues a part of normal routine business of any well-led NHS organisation.
  • Culture free from bullying - freedom of staff to speak out relies on staff being able to work in a culture which is free from bullying.
  • Training - every member of staff should receive training in their trust's approach to raising concerns and in receiving and acting on them.
  • Support - all NHS trusts should ensure there is a dedicated person to whom concerns can be easily reported and without formality, a "Freedom to Speak Up Guardian" .
  • Support to find alternative employment in the NHS - where a worker who has raised a concern cannot, as a result, continue their role, the NHS should help them seek an alternative job.

    • Reactions

    Many campaigners claimed that the recommendations did not go far enough.

    National Guardian

    In January 2016 Eileen Sills was appointed as the first Freedom to Speak Up National Guardian for the NHS. She resigned two months later, citing that she did not have sufficient time to combine this role with her other work.

    References

    Freedom to Speak Up Review Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA