I tend to be a positive person who tries to recognise and celebrate good things wherever I can and, when problems arise, address the issues in front of us. Having a positive working environment is important in health and care services. It helps build resilience for staff – as shown in research into NHS cultures from Lancaster University. Being optimistic and positive does not disregard the challenges we face and should always be tempered by realism and practicality. That’s one of the features of the work we have been doing on our financial strategy.

Another area where we should never fall into the trap of optimism without realism is safeguarding. This week it is West Yorkshire safeguarding week and I know staff across the area will be reflecting on their safeguarding responsibilities. Safeguarding week is a real opportunity to highlight issues that may be affecting both adults and children across the patch. And it will be an issue that you come across in your work. Abuse is any action that violates a person’s human or civil rights. It can take many forms and involve a number of factors including physical, sexual, psychological, financial, neglect, discrimination, domestic abuse, or organisational abuse. We can only achieve our ambitions as a partnership if we can protect vulnerable people from all types of abuse and manage any safeguarding issues.

Anyone who has been close to a safeguarding review will never forget the details of what emerges – or the lengths some people will go to in harming their children, elderly parents or a vulnerable person. It’s one of the most sobering parts of my role as a Chief Executive and something we collectively need to keep in view. As well as in our day to day working, we also need to maximise the potential for joining up services and sharing intelligence about our communities. This is a fundamental part of our work streams on communities, primary care, public health, carers and prevention. Whenever you read a child or adult safeguarding review report, there is often an issue of communication, an opportunity missed or misalignment of services where the person fell through the gap.

“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity” Julie Warren Sykes told a European conference earlier this year as she described the learning from the murder of her own daughter. Julie is one of my team and her wisdom is highly relevant to safeguarding week. You can read more here. Her courage in speaking out and the personal cost of these lessons is huge. I wanted to share her simple message for all staff:

  • be professionally curious always;
  • really listen to the person in front of you and think about what life is like for them when seeking to understand their actions; and
  • never forget your safeguarding duty, ever.

As we journey through our partnership and plans for the future, we can have to focus on the twin issues of delivering good, effective, safe services today and developing new services for tomorrow. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) annual assessment of health and social care in England report gives an indication of how we are doing. Amid the headlines was a simple statement that rang true – Sir David Behan, CEO of the CQC:

‘The fact that the quality of care has been maintained in the toughest climate that most can remember is testament to the efforts of front line staff, managers and leaders’.

The full report looks at the trends, highlights examples of good and outstanding care, and identifies factors that maintain high-quality care. You can read it here.

Our job now as a partnership is to build optimism with realism for our staff and the public so that we have a credible plan for future services. This will continue to be the case for some time.

Have a good weekend

What else has been happening this week?

West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) update

  • WYAAT held its first ever executive workshop on 19 September, attended by the majority of the executive directors from the six WYAAT trusts. The workshop explored the appetite and practicalities of increasingly close collaboration between the trusts. There was a clear conclusion that we are all absolutely committed to working together as a system and we agreed a number of actions to develop this further.
  • Recently the Health Service Journal published a piece on the work WYAAT is doing, along with a number of other Trusts, to streamline pharmacy services. You can read it here.
  • On 2 October we held the first vascular services network clinical working group. The group brought clinicians from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust together to develop a clinical model for a networked service which will increase quality and address the sustainability issues facing the service.
  • The WYAAT Chief Executives met on 3 October and received updates on progress of the WYAAT programmes. The scope of a WYAAT workforce programme and its initial priority to focus on a West Yorkshire and Harrogate approach to agency and bank staff were agreed.
  • On 6 October a small group from the WYAAT Trusts were lucky enough to visit the British Cycling Team in Manchester to learn about their approach to leadership and high performance. It was inspiring to hear from Justin Grace, the sprint coach, and, as ever, there were many ideas we can learn from in health.
  • Finally on 9 October, WYAAT hosted the first ever STP wide ‘Getting it Right First Time’ (GIRFT) symposium attended by over 100 clinicians and senior managers from the WYAAT trusts.

Standardisation of policies

There is a big opportunity to make all our commissioning policies (the policies we have about buying health and social care services) the same and reduce the difference in the treatment that people across West Yorkshire and Harrogate can access. We want to make sure that what care people receive is fair and consistent no matter where they live.

Matt Walsh (Senior Responsible Officer for the Programme and also Chief Officer for Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group) chaired the meeting on Tuesday with support from Dr James Thomas and Catherine Thompson.

Colleagues from public health, NHS England and commissioning groups, including Harrogate, Leeds, Calderdale, Airedale and Wharfedale, Wakefield and Kirklees, Healthwatch attended the meeting.

Matt gave an overview on the work discussed at the clinical forum last week, including supporting healthier choices, clinical thresholds; follow up appointments and medicine waste. The programme is also about working closer with primary care colleagues, for example GPs and councils to prevent ill health and supporting people to make healthy life style choices.

Further conversations will take place across the partnership around how we work with people to offer choice to improve their health, and what options are publically available.

Place based planners

Place based planners met on Tuesday. Colleagues gave an update on their local plans.

Thanks to Soo Nevison for updating colleagues on the “harnessing the power of communities” which includes asset based community development. Cormac Russell will attend the leadership day on the 7 November to discuss this area of work.

Hannah Howe and Soo Nevison are our partnership VCS leads. They are coordinating an event on the 6 November to bring together West Yorkshire and Harrogate programme leads to discuss voluntary sector involvement in all the work streams.

Healthwatch are exploring how we can generate different types of conversations with communities using social media. They are working in partnership with Kirklees Public Health to explore what actually makes people healthy.

Healthwatch are keen to understand how we can take some of the social value ideas that exist in local government procurement and explore how they relate to NHS commissioning.

Fatima Khan-Shah, West Yorkshire and Harrogate, unpaid carers lead is also planning an event on the 14 December to discuss how best West Yorkshire and Harrogate programmes can embed this important area of work into all that we do.

Yorkshire and Humber Patient Experience Network Meeting

Over twenty colleagues from across the area met on Wednesday to discuss the work of the patient experience network. This includes representatives from commissioning, hospitals, nursing and Healthwatch. Susan Woodward from NHS England chaired the meeting. There was a presentation from Rachel Pearce about “Born in Hull raised by HEY” a project for young people (16-25yrs) who experience social anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. The project is all around raising confidence, peer support, apprenticeships and volunteering. The work is championed by Tommy Coyle Foundation (boxer) who’s academy gyms are free for the under 18 yrs. in Hull. The programme works with many partners and businesses and has a great success in finding health and care apprenticeships for young people who may otherwise struggle to find work. Their motto is ‘helping one person might not change the world, but it could change the world for one person’.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate programme meeting

The programme leads met on Thursday. Ian Holmes (STP Director) gave an update on the production and publication of our ‘Next Steps’ document which has been circulated for comments and also the development of a draft memorandum of understanding. Fatima Khan-Shah also gave colleagues an overview on the importance of embedding unpaid carers in all our work streams and workforce planning. Matt Graham (WYAAT Programme Director) suggested that Fatima attends the WYAAT nurse directors meeting. Matt Ward (STP core team) and Dawn Lawson (Yorkshire and Humber, Academic Health Science Network) gave an overview on the work they are doing around innovation and improvement.

What’s coming up next week?

·Phil Corrigan (Chief Officer for Leeds Clinical Commissioning Groups) will chair the System Leadership Group on Tuesday, which is made up representatives from across our partnership.

·The primary care and community programme will meet on Tuesday.

·WY&H Health and Wellbeing Board Chairs will meet on Wednesday.

·Partnership directors of finance will meet on Wednesday.

·The Public Sector Communications Academy national conference takes place in Leeds on Wednesday.

·Leeds Health and Wellbeing Board will meet on Thursday.

For information

·Yorkshire Cancer Patient Forum have been asked to identify patient or carers to be involved in a new research programme to carry out mobile screening for lung cancer. You can find more information at www.wyhpartnership.co.uk

·Congratulations to the Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group Medicines Optimisation team for being shortlisted and highly commended at the 2017 PrescQIPP Annual Event and Innovation Awards. You can watch the films here: Part One and Part Two.

·Merran McRae, Wakefield Council CEO talks to Fiona Russell from the Local Government Association about her experience of the vanguard programmes in Calderdale and Wakefield. You can watch it here.

·Rob Webster, West Yorkshire and Harrogate, CEO lead talks in this short film about ‘If something works somewhere and the evidence is good, it’s our duty to say ‘why don’t we do it everywhere?’