The year of the pandemic: A summary of speaking up to Freedom to Speak Up Guardians
Speaking Up Data report for 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021
Freedom to Speak Up Guardians submit their data to the National Guardian’s Office on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. At the end of each financial year, guardians are invited to review and reconcile their data submissions to ensure accuracy.
The reconciled data is used to compile a year-end report reflecting on trends and themes.
20,388 cases brought to Freedom to Speak Up Guardians in 2020/21
Latest figures
Why is speaking up data important?
The data Freedom to Speak Up Guardians submit helps provide confidence – and assists in learning and improvement – for the colleagues and organisations they support, and other Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.
We share this information with NHS England and Improvement. This currently only applies to NHS trusts and foundation trusts. NHS E/I use this data, along with other indicators and intelligence, to inform their thinking around where to offer improvement support in relation to Freedom to Speak Up.
NHS E/I also upload this information to the Model System. Freedom to Speak Up Guardians and leaders can use this service to build a more holistic picture of their organisation’s speaking up culture.
We are also working with others (including the Care Quality Commission) to share speaking up data to inform their understanding and work.
Upcoming dates for data submissions
Q1 (April – June 2021/22): Opens Monday 12 July at 09:00 and closes Monday 2 August at 17:00
Q2 (2021/22): Opens Monday 11 October at 09:00 and closes Monday 1 November at 17:00
Q3 (2021/22): Opens Monday 10 January 2022 and closes Monday 31 January 2022
Q4 (2021/22): Opens Monday 11 April 2022 and closes Monday 3 May 2022
PortalAnnual Speaking Up Data Reports
These previous year end Speaking Up Data Reports report reflect on some of the trends and themes from the speaking up data for those years.
- Between 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, 20,388 cases were raised with Freedom to Speak Up Guardians. This is a 26-percentage point increase from the previous year. Quarter three (October to December 2020) had the highest number of cases reported to the NGO in a single quarter (5,334) since Freedom to Speak Up Guardians were established in 2016.
- Guardians received over 16,000 speaking up cases in 2019/20 – an increase of 32% compared to the previous year. This is nearly half of the 35,000 cases raised with guardians since we started collecting data in 2017/18.
- 12,244 cases were raised to Freedom to Speak Up Guardians in trusts and Foundation trusts between 1st April 2018 and 31st March 2019 – 73% higher than that raised the previous year.
- For the first year in which we collected data – 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018 – 7,087 cases were raised to Freedom to Speak Up Guardians in NHS trusts and foundation trusts
Case Study
The use of data played a major role in Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust ’s efforts to improve their speaking up culture as Matt Asbrey, former Freedom to Speak Up Guardian at NHFT explains.
By triangulating the data provided from speaking up cases raised, pulse surveys and the results of the NHS National Staff Survey, Matt was able to better understand the experience of workers and identify areas for learning and improvement.
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