Hello my name is Soo

I am the CEO of Community Action Bradford and District and my role within the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership is Chief Officer lead for the Harnessing the Power of Communities programme (HPoC). I also have a seat on the Partnership’s Leadership Executive Group, where I undertake the role of a critical friend and advocate for the voluntary and community sector (VCS) alongside my colleague, Nichola Esmond from Healthwatch.  I also attend the wider leadership group. It’s really important that the VCS are represented on the work of the Partnership and our involvement is welcomed.

There are over 10,000 registered VCS organisations across Yorkshire and Humber providing a wealth of services within our local communities. They are an important part of connecting care in our communities and often know what makes people healthy and well at a grassroots level far more than many other organisations due to their unique relationships with citizens in local neighborhoods.

The VCS’s valuable and distinctive contribution to the lives of people has been delivered through the spirit of empowerment, enabling people to be active citizens to develop sustainable communities (there is a useful blog here which you may find helpful – where Rob Webster, Glen Garrod and Alex Fox explain how important it is for the NHS to engage with the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector to help redefine services for the local community).   The VCS has also tackled deprivation and helped create more prosperous communities not only in terms of wealth but in terms of social capital, personal confidence and resilience.

A key feature of the VCS is its ability to quickly adapt and respond to research and innovation, even in very specialist fields, for example in children’s care and dementia.  Furthermore, the VCS has a good understanding of local issues enabling the sector to work with public sector providers to achieve common goals around joined up community care. It influences public policy, ensuring that issues are addressed whilst helping to facilitate solutions.

So what has HPoC been up to?   As a programme we are faced with huge challenges in terms of ‘pulling everyone together’ and our work has included meeting with VCS representatives from across the area to update them on the Partnership’s progress to date. In particular we are asking them where and how they would like to get more involved in the West Yorkshire and Harrogate’s priority areas of work, including preventing ill health, cancer, mental health, maternity services, urgent emergency care, supporting unpaid carers and community involvement.

Since the arrival of Ash Ahmed (our new project manager), we have been able to make our work come alive. We will be placing and supporting VCS colleagues’ across the whole of the priority programmes within the next few weeks; starting with mental health in September with others hopefully in place by mid-October.  We are also going to bolster the VCS engagement at the wider leadership group and will be seeking a representative from each of our six local areas (Bradford District and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield) to join this group from October.

We have started drafting our VCS2020 strategy which will look to drive our ambitions through the concept of the 4C’s – community engagement, commissioning, capacity building and communication; with a newly established steering group meeting due to meet in September 2018.  Our vision is to establish a new relationship with our communities built around good work on the co-production of services and care, sharing good practice from across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate area and within our six local areas as well as using the learning from the Asset Based Community Development approach with Cormac Russell.  We hope to share this with our health care leaders over the coming months.

Furthermore the HPoC programme has been asked to oversee the delivery of £1m programme to tackle loneliness and isolation alongside our local council partners.  Evidence suggests that loneliness can have a harmful effect on people’s physical and mental health, as well as impacting on public spend.  Loneliness is related with higher rates of depression, elevated blood pressure and dementia. It is said to lead to higher rates of premature death comparable to those associated with smoking and heavy drinking.  We will be looking towards our six local areas to develop local solutions together, led by the VCS delivered in partnership with NHS and council colleagues, including Health and Wellbeing Boards. This will help to make a step change in how communities become more effective at tackling loneliness and this important, hidden health issue.

We are also keen to support the ongoing organisational development programme and the workforce plan through supporting the delivery of newly approved projects - including one that will build on the assets of those with lived experience of mental health issues enabling them to provide peer support within the workforce.

So all in all we are raring to go and are very firmly in the starting blocks.  You can expect to hear much more from us in the coming months.  We will be providing regular updates via a newsletter that we will publish on the Partnership’s website and will ensure that this is advertised via the weekly update when this begins.

Thanks for reading – if you want to know more about this very important programme of work, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Have a good weekend

Soo

What else has been happening this week?

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Workforce Action Board (LWAB)

The workforce programmes of our partnership are supported through Local Workforce Action Boards (LWABs) which ensure that decisions about the health and social care workforce take place in the right place at the right time with the right people. The LWAB for West Yorkshire and Harrogate is jointly chaired by Mike Curtis, Local Director for Health Education England working across Yorkshire and the Humber, and Dr Ros Tolcher, Chief Executive of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust – the Board last week.  Two colleagues from each of our six local places (Bradford District and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Leeds, Kirklees and Wakefield) will be invited to join the Board.

For more information about the LWAB or to be added to a distribution list for communications please contact lwabs.yh@hee.nhs.uk

Urgent Care and Emergency Programme Board

Our Urgent and Emergency Programme Board met on Monday. The Board is chaired by Dr Adam Sheppard and includes partnership colleagues from clinical commissioning groups, hospitals, urgent care providers, NHS England and the local A&E delivery boards. This week’s discussions included conversations around direct booking from 111 into GP extended access sites; the use of technology; an offer from Imperial College Health Partners and our Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Service Network colleagues to support with demand forecasting over the next five years and a community ‘change the conversation’ communication campaign in relation to urgent and emergency care which is something we have not done before.

What’s happening next week?

  • The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Public Health Co- ordination Group meet next week.  The meeting is chaired by Dr Ian Cameron from Leeds City Council.

What’s coming up?

  • The West Yorkshire and Harrogate (WY&H) Joint Committee of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) will meet in public on Tuesday 4 September 2018.  The agenda for the 4 September 2018 will be published online on Tuesday 28 August 2018 at www.wyh-jointcommiteeccgs.co.uk where information from previous meetings held in public can be found.