Hello, my name is Brendan

Posted on: 16 November 2018

Hello, my name is Brendan.

I’m the Chief Executive of Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, and the Partnership Lead for the Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven Partnership.

I joined Airedale in June this year, so it’s been both a busy and interesting time, as I’ve been learning all about my new organisation. Something I’ve been doing over the past few months is considering the impact that Airedale has had on me and reflecting on what makes it special.

So, a bit of background, for those of you who don’t know us. We are an integrated trust, combining acute and community services. Located as we are on the western frontier of West Yorkshire, our geography has an impact on us – some of you reading this may be wondering where on earth Airedale is. Our hospital is based in the Aire Valley between Keighley and Skipton, at the gateway to the Dales. Our services reach up to Settle in the north, Colne in the west, Ilkley to the east and the outskirts of Bradford to the south, some 700 square miles. Our population is spread across urban areas, tourist hotspots and rurally isolated farms and homesteads. 153 languages are spoken across our patch; our diversity is rich.

So what makes Airedale special? We are known in particular for our telemedicine services, for our Goldline palliative care service, and our approach to digital healthcare, of which we are rightly proud. But for me, it’s our place in our community. For starters the majority of our people live locally which means that the patients we care for are our families, our friends and our neighbours, from cradle to grave – and our staff are also our patients. This brings a very different dimension to providing healthcare which makes the Trust a warm, friendly place to work. Our community reciprocates this by giving us incredible support; our 350+ volunteers are a testament to this support, and community pride in ‘our hospital’ is tangible. A stand-out moment for me was last week’s launch of our mobile cancer care unit in partnership with the Hope For Tomorrow charity. The unit will travel to the furthest outreaches of our patch, providing cancer treatment to our patients in their communities – a real example of how we’re giving something back to our communities for their incredible support.

You may wonder how a smaller Trust could appreciate the problems faced by larger organisations, but we are tackling the same issues that our West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership colleagues are: how to do more for less, how to keep services safe, efficient and effective, how to transform services, how to work collaboratively, how to manage the 8% increase in demand so far this year, how to manage the ask from the centre, and how to recruit, retain and look after our workforce. Reflecting on the armistice commemoration last weekend, I was struck by how the country faced the same health and social care challenges a hundred years ago; a rise in demand, a shortage of workforce, the need to modernise medicine, and the nation facing uncertainty. All familiar concerns in 2018.

However, Airedale is part of an ambitious, forward-thinking system that works well together, with a common ambition to do the best by the communities we serve. Demand has been high this summer but it’s thanks to the close working between our community, social care, voluntary and third sector organisations and mental health partners that we’ve managed to get patients home and support them to be there – delivering on the system’s aim for local people to be happy, healthy and at home. As we head into winter it’s more important than ever that we’re able to rely on each other for the support that we know we can deliver.

As well as focusing on patients and our population needs across the Partnership, we’re also keen to focus on our people. Part of retaining and growing our teams is giving our people the opportunity to develop across the system and we are working together to do this. I’ve recently started conversations with Partnership colleagues about rotating staff between our organisations, to give them a breadth of experience that they would otherwise not be able to get without changing jobs. We have work taking place collectively around attracting people to the district, into health and care jobs; we’re growing our future workforce by working closely with local schools and colleges; and we’re doing specific pieces of work to look after our people’s health and wellbeing, and reward and recognition.

The Partnership is also grasping some of our more thorny issues, as we challenge ourselves to think about how we spend the public pound differently, and truly modernise our digital thinking. Not easy issues to transform in the face of our often frenetic work lives, but doing more of the same will only get us the same, and I’m reassured by a collective support and agreement amongst our partners to challenge the status quo, and be the best that we can be. This is all part of our West Yorkshire and Harrogate Association of Acute Trusts work (WYAAT – hospitals working together).

I hope this has given you a flavour of what we’re about over this side of the patch and I’d be delighted to welcome you to visit our part of West Yorkshire.

Have a good weekend.

Brendan

What else has been happening this week?

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity System Board (LMS)

The WY&H Local Maternity System held their Board meeting on Monday. It was chaired by Anne-Marie Henshaw (Head of Midwifery at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust), Anne-Marie is one of three co-chairs for the LMS Board.

The Board includes heads of midwifery, obstetricians, neonatologists, a public representative, general managers and colleagues from Yorkshire Ambulance Service, hospitals working together (WYAAT), public health, business intelligence, the maternal clinical network and communications.

A proposal to start a staff and wellbeing engagement project (‘what matters to me at work’), was supported by the Board. The Board noted the importance of this during times of transformation and the challenges of delivering continuity of care.

The Board also welcomed other workforce developments including working together to explore the coordination of recruitment activity, improving preceptorship and leadership in the maternity workforce. From a digital perspective there is the potential to work with Which Birth Choice on website information. This will be discussed with Maternity Voice Partnerships for their views. The draft equality impact assessment was also discussed and this will be published on our website soon.

Co-production on the ‘My Journey’ plan continues with the Maternity Voices Partnerships.

Our work with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service involves looking at other ideas being implemented nationally for shared learning. Each hospital trust provided an update on developments to date and there was a good discussion on how these could be shared across West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity System.

Thanks were noted for Professor Suzanne Hinchliffe (Deputy CEO / Chief Nurse for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust), who is standing down as one of the programme board’s co-chairs.

Patient and Public Involvement Assurance Group for the Joint Committee of Clinical Commissioning Groups

The lay members from the nine CCGs across our area met on Monday to review public and patient involvement in three of the Partnership work streams – cancer, urgent and emergency care and maternity services. They were also given an update on the recent stroke report which was presented to the Joint Committee of Clinical Commissioning Group last week.

The Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Programme Board

The Mental Health Programme Board met on Monday. Colleagues discussed the national NHS Long Term Plan which includes all elements of the Board’s work. An update was given on the opportunities for collaboration in autism and ADHD services (children and adults). It was agreed that a proposal would be discussed and developed with all organisations for taking forward the children’s autism work in the first instance. There was also a discussion around learning disability services and it was agreed that work would begin to determine how we bring together the three existing Transforming Care Programmes (TCP) into one programme from April 19. The Board also discussed the benefits of a partnership approach for all people with a learning disability (not just those in TCP) and agreed to establish a task and finish group to look at how best to work together across health and social care.

Network event for health system engagement and communications

Communication and engagement colleagues from across England who work for the 44 Partnerships (also known as sustainability transformation partnerships and integrated care systems) met on Tuesday. The session provided an opportunity to share best practice and to find out more about shared priorities around communicating and engaging with staff and the public.

The day included a mixture of speakers and breakout sessions for practical learning. With the publication of the long-term plan - the session was timely for engagement and communication colleagues and provided a good opportunity to talk through what the plan means at a local level and the vital public and patient engagement we will all need to do to help make it a reality. There was also an update on research from the polling agency Britain Thinks around public perceptions.

Looking out for our neighbours campaign update

Our West Yorkshire and Harrogate campaign is currently in the first stage of being co-created with four pilot neighbourhoods across our area (Calderdale; Harrogate; Leeds and Craven). The main objective of the campaign is to encourage communities to look out for vulnerable people, thus reducing demand on health and care services through early help and preventing ill health. This phase of work will help us understand the barriers that prevent neighbours looking out for one another (and those who are vulnerable), and the motivations needed to overcome these barriers. The main objective is to understand how we can create a campaign that has involved communities and easy for our Partnership to adopt. We have good support across the whole of the Partnership with more partners getting involved each week, including housing and the Jo Cox Foundation. Please note the campaign will cover all of West Yorkshire and Harrogate.

What’s happening next week?

The WY&H System Oversight and Assurance Group meets on Monday.
Improving planned care and reducing variation in commissioning policies programme meets on Tuesday.
The planning group for ‘Looking out for our neighbours’ campaign meets on Thursday.
Finance directors from across the Partnership meet on Friday.

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Hello, my name is Brendan