Hello my name is Anne-Marie

Working together to continually improve maternity care is one of our West Yorkshire and Harrogate priorities.  The plan we have produced to help us do this has been developed in partnership with staff, women, their partners and their families living across our area. You can read it here.

This is really important if we are to ensure our maternity services give women, their partners and families the information they need to make choices and decisions before getting pregnant, so women are in the best health possible before and after they give birth. Women, their partners and families have different experiences and choices depending on where they live and we want to change that – we want West Yorkshire and Harrogate to be a great place to give birth and an excellent place to work.

With this in mind, colleagues from the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity System (LMS) came together on Wednesday to hear from Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent (Head of Maternity Children and Young People and National Maternity Safety Champion) and Claire Matthews, Deputy Head of Maternity from NHS England about supporting maternity providers to meet the ambitions laid out in  Better Births.

The session focused on implementing continuity of carer.  Better Births says that every woman should have a midwife who is part of a small team of four to six midwives, based in the community who knows the family and can provide continuity through pregnancy, birth and postnatally.

It was an informative session with over 40 colleagues from community and hospital midwifery, obstetrician’s, general managers, business intelligence, policy and planning coming together to discuss the work of the LMS to date and delivering  the ambitions for the programme moving forward.

Jacqueline explained that changing the culture is paramount to embracing change and improvements if we are to improve our continuity of carer numbers for 2019 and beyond. It is important we take everyone with us on the journey; that we listen to people who use maternity care and equally those who provide the care in all settings. It was also highlighted that every woman who enters a maternity service, whether in hospital or the community must receive good quality personalised care consistently – no matter where you live. 

Claire highlighted the importance of utilising evidence and gave an overview of Professor Jane Sandall’s work on continuity of carer, for example a woman is 7 times more likely to be cared for by someone they know, 16% less likely to lose her baby, 15% less likely to have an epidural.

Safety is a golden thread throughout the maternity transformation, continuity of carer delivers safer care.

Finally each trust in the LMS shared their ideas for delivering Continuity of Carer and Jacqueline and Claire gave useful feedback on the work to date and where learning could be taken from other sites across the Country.  Examples included Maternity Support Workers and Obstetricians working differently to deliver Continuity of Carer.

To conclude Jacqueline explained to colleagues in the room that this is our time to tell the story – to promote our profession and to make transformation positively happen for women not only in pregnancy but pre and post pregnancy.

The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity System film was shared this week with colleagues working in maternity. The film gives information on what an LMS is and how it will work to provide personalised and safer care to women and their families across the region.  You can view the film here  

Have a good weekend

Anne-Marie

 

What else has been happening this week?

Organisational development event

Over 50 West Yorkshire and Harrogate colleagues, including those from councils, CCGs, hospitals and community organisations attended a co-production session on Tuesday to begin the Partnership organisational development conversation (OD).

The lively session was led by Helen Hirst, CEO for Bradford District and Craven; Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven Clinical Commissioning Groups. Helen is also the CEO lead for the work alongside Dawn Lawson, Director of West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership System Transformation and Leadership.

As individual organisations we need to develop how we work together on the West Yorkshire and Harrogate priorities, which include mental health, urgent care, maternity and cancer - especially if we want to improve the way we plan and deliver care.

Helen explained that organisational relationships are better now than ever before and we need to positively build on this across our wider Partnership. We already have a strong sense of common purpose i.e. supporting and developing our workforce to deliver the best care possible, and we need to make the most of future opportunities.

While we undoubtedly operate in a complex system and consequently do not have simple solutions to some of the challenges we face, we do some things in a complicated way and can change those more easily.

Engaging people at a West Yorkshire and Harrogate level around values, attitudes and beliefs won’t be easy – we all come with our own way of thinking and doing.   Each organisation has spent many an hour developing its values and vision and establishing its own behavioural framework.  We need to build on these individual narratives to develop a collective one which feels more appropriate for the partnership world we are working in now but doesn’t lose sight of the uniqueness of the individual partners.

Constructively challenging our own and others view to change the mind-set we operate within at a West Yorkshire and Harrogate level is key to OD - as is evaluating the difference new ways of working make to people lives. There is much to share and learn from our six local places (Bradford District and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Leeds, Kirklees and Wakefield) and it was good to hear from sector, place and programme leaders throughout the day.  This provided some formal input to help formulate what the OD strategy needs to focus on.

Soo Nevison from the voluntary and community sector (VCS) who leads the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Harness the Power of Communities work stream talked about the VCS challenges and opportunities. There are 10,280 registered charities in West Yorkshire and Harrogate with thousands of hours going unrecorded from millions of volunteers. ‘We are a flotilla with different size boats and canoes’ said Soo.

Madi Hoskin, Programme Manager for WYAAT (acute trusts working together), discussed the challenges hospitals face. These challenges are no longer solvable by individual organisations working in isolation. WYAAT brings together our six acute hospitals under one committee in common where thinking and working collaboratively is the norm. ‘It achieves greater results for both patients and workforce. OD is an important part of the work we do’ said Madi.

Colleagues also heard from Steve Keyes, Organisational Development Lead for Leeds GP Federation on the work of the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Plan. Importantly, Steve talked about how OD can support the work of tackling health inequalities and how by working and thinking differently it can make a big difference. Steve stressed that positive change can be made quite simply through the relationships we have individually and collectively.

In the afternoon we heard from Emma Fraser, West Yorkshire and Harrogate Director for the Mental Health Programme. Emma talked about the new committee bringing together NHS mental health providers across West Yorkshire. This builds on the close partnership working that has taken place over the past year.

Known as the West Yorkshire Mental Health Services Collaborative, the organisations have been working together to improve mental health services for local communities.  The programme has also been testing new models of care that blur the lines between commissioners who buy health care and those who provide services.

Colleagues enjoyed listening to Robin Tuddenham, CEO at Calderdale Council who talked about a shared understanding across local authority partners and the power of our six local places. Robin also talked about the importance of meaningful conversations and how in some cases collaboration can be harder than competition and how we need to collaborate to thrive.

Dr Andy Withers Clinical Chair for Bradford Districts Clinical Commissioning Group and Chair of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Clinical Forum discussed the history and the development of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Clinical Forum and explained how connecting people to peers in other organisations are the only way. Convincing people that what we are saying now won’t be replaced in a couple of years’ time is a challenge. Some colleagues felt that the culture we are developing has come from the perspective of ‘tightening of our belt’ and organisations wanting to do more together from a position of less.

Outcomes from group conversations included, leadership at every level; getting the language right so we can tell our story better; the impact of a changing environment; responsibilities; culture; values and behaviours (which appear similar in most organisations) and the need to develop a West Yorkshire and Harrogate OD network to ensure the OD strategy is co-created with every partner.

A small group from the network will meet in September to flesh out the actions from the day.

Thank you to colleagues who attended the session for the energy and enthusiasm in the room and for those who offered to take forward the work on the next step of our OD Partnership journey.

 

What’s happening next week?

  • Colleagues from the Partnership will meet with the West Yorkshire Joint Health and Overview Scrutiny Committee on Monday.
  • A Local Workforce Action Board investment meeting will take place on Tuesday.
  • Partnership Directors of Finance meet on Wednesday.
  • The Public Health Coordination Group meets on Thursday.

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