Posted on: 6 March 2020
This week’s leadership message is part of our ‘We work together’ podcast series. The episode features Owen Williams, CEO for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust and CEO Lead for the Partnership’s Capital and Estates Programme, in conversation with Partnership Director Ian Holmes. They talk about Owen's career and leadership journey, developing BAME talent, hospitals working together and why Owen was once known as "The Gloombuster"...
What else has been happening this week?
Eating Disorders Awareness Week
This week has been Eating Disorders Awareness Week and colleagues at Leeds York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) have been taking the opportunity to showcase their nationally recognised Connect service. People who access the support are from across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. The service includes community and in the inpatient unit at the Newsam Centre at Seacroft Hospital.
Workshop on health inequalities
The Improving Population Health Programme hosted a workshop on health inequalities in Leeds last week. Attended by around 40 people from across the Partnership, the workshop heard from Professor Chris Bentley, Programme Director Sarah Smith and GPs Bill Graham and James Thomas bringing insights into the wider determinants of health that impact on families, individuals and the community. Professor Bentley also introduced the concept of a ‘no man’s land’ in the space between ‘community and “service’ and how we can turn this space into an ‘abundantly flourishing land’ that bridges, connects and makes life easier for everyone, wherever they live. There will be much more to come this year from this critical programme that reaches from reducing violent crime to climate change.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts Project
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership is delighted to announce that West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts project has been shortlisted for the Cardiovascular Care Initiative of the Year category at the HSJ Value Awards 2020, recognising their outstanding dedication to making things better in the NHS. The initiative commissioned by West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership and delivered by West Yorkshire and Humber AHSN is supporting GP practices and healthcare professionals to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease across West Yorkshire and Harrogate (Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield). You can read more here.
Health and Care Champions (people with learning disabilities)
This important project continues to build relationships with local groups in each of our six places (Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield) that are run for and by people with learning disabilities. The focus is on training people to lead conversations with others so that their lived experiences of and ambitions for the services we provide can be shared with our programmes. The project is seeking to recruit as many people as possible; particularly women with learning disabilities who are currently using or have recently used maternity services and will be working with the Maternity Voices Partnerships to bring those women’s experiences and concerns to the fore.
Kirklees gets together to tackle loneliness
Over 100 people from over 60 organisations from Kirklees, which includes Huddersfield and Dewsbury, came together to raise awareness of the impact of loneliness on people’s lives on Thursday. The conference, the first of its kind for the area, was held at Huddersfield University. It was organised by various organisations including The Jo Cox Foundation; Yorkshire Children’s Centre; Kirklees Befriending Partnership; local Age UK; Locala Community Partnerships CIC; Kirkwood Hospice, Kirklees Council Community Plus; Royal Voluntary Service; West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership – to name a few.
The Befriending Partnership (Kirklees) was formed two years ago with a common goal of reducing loneliness and isolation in Kirklees. All partners involved offer befriending services, but also offer many other services and support to help people feel more connected and less lonely. By working together, and with wider partners, we can make a bigger difference for people. This is why they brought organisations together at this conference. The conference was inspired by Kim Leadbeater, MP Jo Cox’s sister and Ambassador for the Jo Cox Foundation.
Young People’s Career Event in Bradford
Bradford Districts Clinical Commissioning Group and partners hosted a Young People’s Career Event at Bradford University on Wednesday. The event included young carers from across Bradford, Airedale and Craven. To support young carers, the event involved several facilitated sessions supported by the Partnership’s Unpaid Carers Programme, Carers Resource and the Ahead Partnership to help identify and support young carers from local schools. The sessions aimed to show young carers how their skills can be transferred into exciting and varied roles in the health and care sector. The event was supported by role models from across local business and the NHS as well as young adult carers who shared their life experiences and reflections.
Coronavirus update
A series of posters have been created for healthcare settings including hospitals and primary care settings. These have been updated with the new list of countries and areas affected.
A poster for GP practices that need to close for cleaning is being produced and will be available shortly. These are available here.
There is a new Public Health England Blog: Coronavirus (COVID-19) – five things you can do to protect yourself and your community. You can read it here.
West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT: hospitals working together)
The WYAAT Programme Executive (the six Chief Executives) met on Tuesday in Huddersfield. The group had an extensive discussion about workforce, leadership and culture - highlighting the critical importance of developing a positive, supportive culture of care for patients and staff. Leadership and culture was the first section of the Interim NHS People Plan and the Chief Executives all emphasised the importance of putting as much focus on this area as on the commitments to increase the numbers of staff. They agreed to share the work each trust is doing on leadership development and culture change so we can all learn from the successes and work together on common challenges. They also agreed to make leadership and culture part of a WYAAT Board Development event being planned for June.
The Chief Executives were pleased to welcome Iain Maxwell, Project Manager for the Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Improvement Standards work. Iain described the national improvement standards and the requirement for all trusts to meet the standards. There was strong support from all the Chief Executives to implement the standards in the WYAAT trusts and good progress has already been made in many areas.
The Programme Executive also discussed the WY&H Pathology Network, particularly the future governance structure and the progress on procuring a single Laboratory Information Management System for the network. The Chief Executives agreed the recommendations to establish a WY&H Pathology Network Board to oversee the operation, improvement and transformation of pathology services in WY&H, with membership from all trusts and representation from primary care, for example GPs.
Estates and Facilities Group
The WYAAT Estates and Facilities Directors met for the first time since 2017 in January. The group has identified a number of priorities, including opportunities to work together on our response to climate change and environmental sustainability.
Outpatients transformation
On behalf of WYAAT, through the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Innovation and Improvement Programme, the Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network is leading work to share trust outpatient transformation approaches. A first outpatients workshop took place on the 12 February 2020 with operational leads, WYAAT Programme Management Office, NHS England /NHS Improvement and system wide attendees. Feedback from attendees was very positive and the following priorities for the next 6 months were agreed: mapping and sharing current trust initiatives; sharing digital requirements; patient initiated follow up; defining success and measurement.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Clinical Forum
The Clinical Forum met on Tuesday. The meeting is chaired by Dr Andy Withers. It includes medical directors, GPs, pharmacists, allied health professionals, lead nurses and NHS England colleagues. This was the last meeting chaired by Dr Andy Withers who retires at the end of the month.
WY&H Pathology Network
Members received an update on the formation of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Pathology Network. The aim is simple – we want to place the patient at the centre of everything we do, by providing an efficient pathology service to GPs and our hospital colleagues. Pathology services in West Yorkshire and Harrogate have been working together for some time. In January 2019, WYAAT agreed to establish a single pathology network for the area and to deliver a single laboratory information management system for use by all trusts.
Integration Index
The health and care service has an extensive programme of patient feedback, hearing from over 1 million people a year. However it is currently largely focused on individual service areas (e.g. GPs, inpatients, etc.) and provides limited understanding of how these services are working together for people. Currently, there are no specific measures designed to look at people’s experiences of integrated care; its quality, outcomes, or the efficiency. This was mentioned in a recent Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Report as a key issue that needed to be overcome if integration was to succeed. Forum members welcomed the approach, especially the need to improve people’s experience through better use of qualitative data. Forum members felt that these experiences would need to be part of the outcome measures with a focus on ‘what matters to people’ and influencing decision-making.
Musculoskeletal (MSK) First Contact Practitioners (FCP)
Musculoskeletal (MSK) First Contact Practitioners (FCP) was also on the agenda. An average of 30% of GP appointments are for musculoskeletal (MSK) problems. Having physiotherapists work within GP practices and take over these appointments, means that people get seen quicker and recover faster. Plus – the workload is reduced for doctors helping to ease pressure off general practice. First Contact Practitioner (FCP) is a new model evolving UK. Colleagues from the WY&H Allied Health Practitioners Council explained the work taking place across our area to develop a framework for implementation, which includes policy and strategy at a local place level with the support from the Partnership for maintaining and developing the work at scale.
Partnership Board
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership’s Partnership Board met for the fourth time in public on Tuesday, 2pm to 5pm, at Huddersfield Town Hall. Chaired by Cllr Tim Swift, Leader of Calderdale Council and Chair of Calderdale Health and Wellbeing Board, it was an important meeting where members considered our approach to reducing health inequalities for people living in West Yorkshire and Harrogate; a set of recommendations to help achieve our ambition for a more diverse leadership; and our approach to planning in 2020/21 were all discussed. You can access the agenda, papers and watch the meeting at: www.wyhpartnership.co.uk/partnershipboard
Questions from the public
There was an opportunity for members of the public to ask questions about all agenda items, at the beginning of the meeting. We received questions on improving population health; health inequalities; addressing obesity and coronavirus. There was also a question on how we reach people who are seldom heard. The voices of people are at the centre of all our work. Working with voluntary and community organisations is critical to achieving this, for example through the Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme. A question on IVF rounds of treatment and NICE guidance was also raised, as part of reducing variation in policies. Our intention is to respond more fully to people within 10 working days. All responses are shared via our website.
Thank you to Dr Andy Withers
Dr Andy Withers retires from his role as Clinical Chair of Bradford District Clinical Commissioning Group and as Chair of the Partnership’s Clinical Forum at the end of March. Rob Webster, our CEO Lead, thanked Andy for all his commitment and hard work in moving forward the Partnership. Andy has chaired the clinical forum for four years – during which time we have seen the clinical forum have a significant role and influence in setting the direction for the Partnership – particularly on areas like the roll out of healthy hearts, stroke care and the atrial fibrillation programme. We wish Andy well in his retirement.
The Partnership’s Five Year Plan
We received strong support for our five year plan at the December Partnership Board, as well as some specific steers on how it could be improved. A revised document reflected these changes and was shared with members of the board in January, and has been published on our website as a ‘final draft’. With the Partnership Board’s agreement, we are now planning to launch the final version.
Election and new government
The Budget on Wednesday 11 March will be a significant milestone in clarifying the Government’s priorities in relation to health and care. We will continue to make the case for funding and that our Partnership’s ambitions cannot be delivered in isolation of local government budgets. The UK formally left the EU at the end of January. This will have a number of implications for health and social care, not least in areas such as the Government’s new immigration policy.
The People Plan
The National People Plan is due to be published in the coming weeks. This is an important document. Staff are our greatest asset and the plan will set out how we will attract, support develop and retain staff. One important aspect of this is diversity of leadership – this is one of our 10 Big Ambitions (see more below).
Population Health Management Programme (PHM)
The Improving Population Health Programme was established following agreement at the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Board meeting in June 2019 with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities for people living across the area. The programme focusses on the added value of combining efforts to work together as a partnership to foster a culture of prevention, making this everyone’s business.
This incorporates prevention across the life course and opportunities to address inequalities. Within the programme we explicitly include the social, environmental and economic factors that have a profound impact on the health of people including; climate change, violent crime and housing. We are working with West Yorkshire Combined Authority to make the most of our relationships, including those of the Leeds City Region. We all have a part to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change and the conditions for concerted action.
Three of the ten key ambitions for the Partnership are identified in this programme. The remaining seven will play a large role in contributing towards other priority programme areas.
One in three young carers say their caring role makes them feel stressed and they are often bullied in and outside of school. We also know that 18.5% of people are recorded as smokers, and the same percentage are classed as obese. This all has a major impact on people’s health and wellbeing. In the last week we have seen the publication of the Marmot Review 10 Years On, which sets out a decline on people’s health and wellbeing. Where people live and the impact of housing on health is one of the programme’s work streams, the inequality of homelessness, street based deaths and poor housing will be discussed at the Partnership’s first housing and health event on the 31 March.
The programme is all about working at scale, making the most of insight and data – and importantly make a difference in the world for people living in West Yorkshire and Harrogate. It’s all about keeping people well rather than only treating illness.
Population health also needs to be part of the wider conversations with the area’s universities. We believe there are significant benefits to be had from closer strategic alignment between our partnership and the University sector across the region. This could include closer working on:
health tech and digital innovation; supporting our aspiration for the Leeds city region to be a global leader in health tech, building on the commitments already made through the Health tech Memorandum of Understanding; building on the Applied Research Centre in Bradford so that leading edge research is directly influencing health and care decision making and building close collaboration on workforce education and training.
We also heard from Presley, who works with Kirklees Council and the support he has given to Jeremy from Huddersfield around improving health and wellbeing through social prescribing. The support given was all about breaking down social isolation, reducing bouts of depression and his diet. Jeremy said “I have been attending CLEMS garden centre, Aspire (arts and craft sessions); all through the Be Together Group. I’m no longer on anti-depressants.” A film has been produced by Kirklees Council Community Plus which describes it wonderfully. You can watch it here.
2020-21 planning
The 2020-21 operational planning process is well underway and the partnership board received an update of the approach we are taking. Central to this is the principle is that local places rather than organisations should be the key unit of planning.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate BAME Talent
Building on the leadership session in October 2019, BAME colleagues came together to help shape how we work together to make this ambition a reality and participants were encouraged to think 'outside of the box' in January. The session included senior leaders from West Yorkshire and Harrogate including one of the Partnership’s BAME Chief Executives sharing their own lived experience and journey into leadership. This led to a conversation to understand what was available across the area, as well as identifying gaps in support and exploring where the Partnership could add value. There were also several sessions sharing good practice whilst exploring opportunities for further collaboration. Colleagues fed back about the importance of visible role models, peer support, a safe space to share experiences and the importance of a forum to shape and influence change across the Partnership, as well as what already exists within their organisations.
Colleagues updated the Board on recent reports which highlighted the pay gap for people from BAME backgrounds. Recent staff NHS and local authority surveys highlighted that racism was the most common form of discrimination, and also saw the highest levels of reported sexism and intolerance of religion and sexuality. Creating a healthy, inclusive and compassionate culture is paramount to delivering the care people would expect and deserve.
Our work over the coming months will set out in more detail the work we will be doing to recognise talent and an increase into leadership roles. The Partnership Board overwhelming approved the recommendations. The BAME staff network is now a formal part of our infrastructure, with real influence and purpose, including a role in the implementation of the core offer for all staff, the Partnership, NHS People Plan and the Leadership Compact across the system. This is all about talent, people and ethics. There was a commitment to take the work into local workforce groups and to ensure recognition to other minority groups, for example people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ colleagues.
Working with communities
Board members received an update on the ‘Looking out for our neighbours’ campaign, which aims to inspire people to take time out of their day to look out for one another and play their part in improving wellbeing and reducing loneliness and social isolation. Around 60,000 free ‘Looking out for our neighbours’ advice packs will be distributed across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. Those who don’t receive an advice pack directly can also find advice and information online at ourneighbours.org.uk. This builds on phase 1 of the campaign which saw over 35,000 packs distributed, which resulted in 46,000 acts of kindness between March and June last year. The presentation included an update from Kirklees Council on the working taking place across all communities at a grass root level and the powerful difference it is making.
The motivation of all those involved in the campaign so far has been overwhelming. It’s heartening to hear what can be achieved when we all come together to offer simple acts of kindness. Local people are also being invited to share their stories of how they’ve helped a neighbour, or how a neighbour has helped them at: ourneighbours.org.uk/news or by using the hashtag #OurNeighbours on social media.