Our Partnership is made up of organisations working closely together to plan services and address the challenges facing health and care services across the area.
In this section you will find links to useful information and publications about our partnership.
We are committed to meaningful conversations with people, on the right issues at the right time. We believe this is an important part of the way we work.
Engagement gives people an opportunity to have their say on services. By gathering people's views, it helps us understand what matters to people.
In this section you will find all Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made to our Partnership. You can also ask a question of your own.
The NHS England/NHS Improvement Board Meeting in November 2020 set out the direction of travel for integrated care systems, which West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership is also known as, and proposed options for legislative change to support this.
It is really important for us to hear people’s comments, ideas and suggestions about ways in which we can make services better.
Engagement is also about developing relationships and partnerships, we want to make sure that the voice of local people and partners are heard.
We are also committed to ensuring that our delivery of engagement and consultation meets the needs of people living in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
No decision will be made about changes to health care services that you receive without us asking you about it first. It's important that you have your say to shape and improve local services.
Our 'Engagment Timeline' for 2020 shows all our planned engagement and communications activity for the year.
This engagement and consultation mapping report presents the findings from all relevant engagement and consultation activity which has taken place during April 2019 to April 2020, across Calderdale, Bradford, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield. The purpose of this report is to refresh the previous engagement and consultation mapping exercise that took place in March 2018. A review has taken place of all relevant engagement and consultation that has taken place between March 2018 and March 2019. This work builds on the previous mapping exercises that have taken place and all the original data from previous reports is also contained within this report.
Further detailed engagement and consultation mapping has been carried out on relevant engagement and consultation activity that has taken place across West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Assessment and treatment units for people with learning disabilities - January 2020
Digitisation and personalisation - June 2019
Mental health and learning disabilities - March 2019
Mapping of organisations for young people across West Yorkshire and Harrogate - July 2018
Audit of urgent and emergency care communication messages - July 2018
Review of engagement and consultation activity on elective care and standardisation - March 2018
Communication needs for people with a sensory impairment - November 2017
Standardisation of policies - September 2017
Maternity Services - August 2017
Assessment and treatment units are like a special kind of hospital ward. They are for people with learning disabilities who might also have mental ill health or if their behaviour is challenging.
In West Yorkshire, people sometimes get sent to assessment and treatment units when they don’t need to be. Some people end up staying there for a long time. This is because there is nowhere else close to where they live for them to be supported well.
We know that it is not good for people’s health and it is expensive for health care services.
In our area, there are three 'Transforming Care Partnerships'. They cover Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Wakefield and Barnsley. They want to stop people with learning disabilities being sent to assessment and treatment units when they don’t need to be. If people do need to be then they must stay in one near to where they live. Community services will be made better and people will get the right care and support for them.
This will mean that more people can stay in their own homes and be close to where their friends and families live.
In 2019 we looked at the way care is provided across the three assessment and treatment units and how as a region we make the best collective use of our services. You can read a report about when we talked to people about ATUs here. A quality and equality impact assessment has been completed and is available on request. You can call 01924 317659 or email jeanette.miller@nhs.net for a copy of the assessment.
More engagement with people who access care, their carers and staff who work in the units was due to start in Spring 2020, but due to the Coronavirus pandemic this activity was paused. Soon after that time, the unit in Leeds was also repurposed, due to the need for extra space related to the pandemic. However, with the support of Inclusion North, a specialist organisation who works with people with complex needs/learning disabilities, this work began on 5 October 2020, it was extended to allow more time for feedback due to challenges presented by engaging during the pandemic but ended on 30 November with the staff engagement continuing until 14 December. The report is now available and will be discussed at various committees within West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership before being presented to the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
All of our information and documents about the assessment and treament units are "easy read".
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership would like to thank Inclusion North, people with lived experience of ATU services, ATU and community staff for their support and input.
Before Covid, many patients and healthcare staff found virtual consultations to be a convenient alternative to face-to-face assessments. Throughout the pandemic however, virtual consultations have been more than just convenient - they have been essential to help keep both patients and staff safe.
Virtual consultations have provided a way for healthcare staff to safely group patients, selecting the most appropriate method of consultation. It has allowed the practice of social distancing, adherence to national recommendations and avoidance of unnecessary travel to reduce infectious contacts, promoting population health.
Our outpatient teams across West Yorkshire and Harrogate are working together to find the best possible solution to optimise virtual consultations that are reliable and consistent across the region. This document Working together - Virtual Consultations gives a summary of the outcomes from a workshop held in December 2020 where attendees looked at some of the key barriers to virtual consultations, potential risks and the next steps.
Earlier this year (2020), NHS England and Improvement (NHSE/I) approved the proposals to allow there to be two specialised vascular centres instead of three in West Yorkshire. One of the specialised vascular centres will be based in Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) due to its status as a major trauma centre; the other specialised vascular centre will be based in Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) due to its co-location with in-patient renal care. The five trusts across West Yorkshire can now proceed with this work and the planned ‘go-live’ date for the second arterial centre has been given approval for Monday 16 November 2020. Following November 16, all in-patient and acute vascular work for West Yorkshire will be managed at the BRI and LGI arterial centres, whilst all centres will continue to offer day case surgery and interventional radiology, out-patient clinics and diagnostics.
Operational working groups have been developed through the partnership at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust to support, shape and progress the overall plans for implementation.
A readiness checklist has been established to ensure that all changes can be implemented safely while the trusts continue to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for the winter months ahead.
Learn more about how our hospitals are working together within The West Yorkshire Vascular Service by watching this short video.
Find out more about this Vascular Services consultation on the NHS England website.
Engagement colleagues are working with Healthwatch partners to have conversations with people and get their views on the development of the Partnership’s five year plan in response to the NHS Long Term Plan. The Partnership’s plan will set out our ambitions for the next five years and also identify any work needed to align to the NHS Long Term Plan. It will build on our work to date and will be a refresh of our ‘Next Steps to Better Health and Care for Everyone'.
Healthwatch were commissioned by NHS England to coordinate and support this work.
Two surveys were made available via Healthwatch, and a series of focus groups were run in our local areas, looking at digitisation, personalisation and wider relevant local long-term plan priorities.
Healthwatch have now produced a report which they have shared with Healthwatch England and the Partnership. A copy of the report is availble to read here, and will be made available on local Healthwatch websites.
Read or download the full version of the Healthwatch Long Term Plan engagement report
Read or download a summary of the Healthwatch Long Term Plan engagement report
The Partnership welcomes the report - you can download the Partnership's official response the report here, and read what local health and care leaders have to say about the report here.
This important work will help us to identify future areas of engagement at a local and West Yorkshire and Harrogate level and will complement the work already taking place, as set out in our engagement and consultation mapping work (and see our engagment mapping work for personalisation and digitisation here). We will continue to keep you updated as the work develops.
You can read more about the NHS Long Term Plan here.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership are pleased to present a collation of feedback received from its partners, including (but not exclusively) from all West Yorkshire Healthwatch organisations, Yorkshire Cancer Community, Carers UK and Bradford Talking Media. This was specifically regarding the impact of coronavirus on individual people and communities. Our thanks go to all engagement colleagues for sharing early findings to contribute to this important, timely piece of work.
Coronavirus engagement report for stabilisation and reset - August 2020
The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts programme has now completed its public engagement on its upcoming work to identify and treat - at scale - patients whose LDL* cholesterol levels that may be better controlled through switching to a high intensity statin, and also initiating a statin in those patients at risk of developing CVD.
The engagement took place from the beginning of June until mid July 2019 and more than 200 responses were received, with some completing the online questionnaire and others giving their feedback in focus groups that took place across West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
You can read more about this engagement work on the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts website
*there are two types of cholesterol - good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein, or HDL) - and bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL). If the level of bad cholesterol in your blood is too high it can increase the risk of heat disease, including heart attack or stroke.
Healthy Hearts engagement report
Healthy Hearts engagement - you said, we did
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership want to develop a mechanism that engages young people with the health and care sector to inspire them to pursue a career in the sector. And to help raise the aspirations of young carers by helping them to identify and recognise their own skills and showcasing work opportunities and the diversity of roles available to them.
The Partnership commissioned Ahead Partnership to help them support one of of the workforce recommendations set out in their strategy to 'increase the number of people training to work in health and social care roles across West Yorkshire and Harrogate'.
An engagement event took place on Tuesday 25 June 2019 at 3M Buckley Innvoation Centre in Huddersfield. 31 young people attended the event which provided an opportunity for young carers from across Kirklees and Calderdale to come together.
You can read the report of findings here.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership held an event on Tuesday 21st May 2019 at Kala Sangam in Bradford to discuss the impact of the NHS Long Term Plan on our communities and, specifically, how the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) can work in partnership with other parts of the system to support some key actions within the Long Term Plan around mental health, social prescribing, admission avoidance at A&E and VCS delivery as part of the primary care network model.
We will also be sharing the work from the Harnessing the Power of Communities workstream within the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership and how each of our 6 places (Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield) have invested money in VCS-led activities. And an update on the peer support workforce development programme and the Building Health Partnerships projects taking place in Calderdale and Wakefield.
Read the final report from the event
Event agenda
View or download the presentations from the event
We looked at the way in which care is provided across the three Assessment and Treatment Units (ATUs) and how as a region we make the best collective use of our services. There are currently 22 specialist hospital beds in West Yorkshire we need to look at reducing this number of beds, so that we can support people with learning disabilities and acute complex needs/challenging behaviour in their local community.
This engagement activity was delivered over a 4 week period commencing 18 February 2019. The engagement is an essential part of our process and is part of a planned approach to seek the views of service users, carers, families, staff and key stakeholders who have experiences of ATUs across West Yorkshire to further to inform the next stage of our work. This next stage will be about how to reconfigure ATU provision in the region to ensure maximum benefit for both service users and the system.
In readiness for further talks about these services in 2020, we are attending the West Yorkshire Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership held an event on Thursday 4 April with over 100 delegates, including carers and carer organisation representatives to discuss how the NHS Long Term Plan can support better outcomes for unpaid carers across the area.
The event brought together a range of local people, carers and health and social care professionals to seek their views. This will help align the West Yorkshire and Harrogate carers’ strategy with the Long Term Plan.
Report of findings from our Long Term Plan unpaid carers engagement event held in April 2019
Find out more about what we're doing to support carers
In February 2019 the Partnership hosted an event to engage staff from a wide group of health, public health, social care, people with lived experience and Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise partners in a conversation about personalised care. This was a show and tell event that looked at what personalised care is, why it’s important, celebrating what we are doing in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, how people can get involved and what the next steps are.
Report of findings from the 'Our Journey to Personalised Care' event
With the recent Government announcement of additional funding for the NHS, West Yorkhsire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership, alongside other partnerships, were invited to comment on the first of a series of conversations around the develeopment of the Long Term Plan.
We collated many responses from across our area. You can view our response here.
On Tuesday 10 July a small working group of representatives from local public, patient groups met to co-produce a mechanisam for providing assurance that here is authentic patient and public involvement in our Parnership work. Over 15 people attended from various organisational roles, including Trust governors, clinical commissioning groups and chairs from MESMAC and Trans Mission. Attendees discussed the findings form the first meeting in April when over 40 people attended.
They disccussed the role they and others could play in ensuring the wider Partnership work keeps the public at the every hear of decision-making. Being open and transparent is very important as is assuring meaningful public engagement. The group also discussed the next steps, which includes a core assurance group to ensure continuity. Keeping the views of young people is essential and Jill Dufton (Partnership Engagement Manager) updated the goup on the work we are doing with youth forums.
Everyone agreed that this was the start of an exciting opportunity to shape effective public, patient involvement assurance for the Partnership. A priority would be to estsablish clear principles of working and assurance standards, learning from existing good practice in our six local places (Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield).
You can read the report from the workshop here.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership held a half day un paid carers and primary care engagement event on Tuesday 25 September at Clayton Hotel Leeds in Leeds. You can read the report of findings here along with our ‘you said, we did’ feedback report from the themes identified in the findings report.
Over fifty people attended a stakeholder event in Leeds on Wednesday 30 May organised by the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership.
The aim of the event was to ask people who have had a stroke, their carers and community organisations, including charities such as the Stroke Association, Age UK and The British Heart Foundation for their views on how specialist stroke care (the care people receive in the first few hours and days after having a stroke) could be further improved to ensure services are fit for the future.
The event hosted by the Partnership’s stroke programme members, which includes doctors, ambulance services and public health colleagues, gave people an update on the work to date including findings from a stakeholder event in February and workshops held in March across the area in Bradford, Brighouse, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield. You can read more about the event here.
You can view the presentations here. The view report of findings from the event here.
A public involvement chairs panel event will take place on the 17 April 2018. Approximately 50 people have signed up and speakers include Jeremy Taylor from National Voices. The aim is to invite people to get more involved and take part in a potential citizen's panel. You can view the presentations here.
17th April 2018 event - Report & Findings
Report of findings from public workshops on stroke – March 2018.
Stroke care event – 2 February 2018. Report findings and presentation
West Yorkshire and Harrogate (WY&H) Health and Care Partnership held an unpaid carers event on Thursday 14 December 2017 at St. Swithuns Centre in Wakefield. The event was the first of its kind across WY&H which was to start conversations with unpaid carers and representatives from carers organisations. The aim of the event was to build on the work to date and heighten the profile of carers in a more holistic way and recognise and celebrate what is happening already across WY&H and identify good practice. Guest speakers on the day included Rob Webster West Yorkshire and Harrogate, Health and Care Partnership, CEO Lead, Emily Holzhausen OBE from Carers UK and Fatima Khan-Shah, Partnership Lead for Carers and Neil Churchill from NHS England. This film made with & by Young Carer Health Champions illustrates the impact of being identified & offered support. Link You can view the presentations here and read the report of findings here.
We are delighted to be able to announce that we held our first voluntary and community and West Yorkshire and Harrogate, Health and Care Partnership on Monday 6 November at the Carlisle Business Centre in Bradford. The aim of the event was to provide an update on the work of the partnership and progress to date, and focused on and how voluntary and community organisations can become more involved moving forward, which is a priority to us all. You can view the presentation here and read the findings report here. A follow up event took place on Friday 1 December. You can read the report here.
Across West Yorkshire and Harrogate, healthcare professionals, including doctors and consultants, are working together to look at how we can further improve care for people who are at risk of stroke, or those who have had a stroke. Before decisions are made on the future of stroke services in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, we wanted to find out what you think about the services that are currently provided and what would be important to you should you have a stroke, or care for someone who has. We have worked with Healthwatch, an organisation which is independent of the NHS, to ask people for their views. You can view this presentation to find out more about our proposals to improve stroke services. Please read the communication, engagement and equality plan and also the initial scoping Equality Impact Assessment. You can read our engagement report to see what we found out. You can also watch this short film to find out more about the results of the engagement activity. Please also view our report to the West Yorkshire Joint Health and Scrutiny Committee 23 January 2017. Between 3 October 2013 and 14 February 2017 a consultation exercise took place on a proposal to change the way hyper acute stroke services are provided in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw. You can read more about this project and what was learnt.
Healthwatch carried out an independent piece of engagement work across West Yorkshire and Harrogate on follow-up appointments. You can read the report here.
We have worked in partnership with the six local Healthwatch across West Yorkshire and Harrogate to help us keep people's views at the heart of our priority areas of work, including urgent care, stroke and health optimisation. For our urgent and emergency care engagement, Healthwatch has helped us to reach out into a range of communities.
For example in July 2015 it was announced that there would be 8 new 'vanguards' for urgent and emergency care. This included the West Yorkshire Urgent and Emergency Care Network that would oversee, with local partners, the improvement of urgent and emergency care for more than 3 million people across West Yorkshire. As part of this work we wanted to seek people's views about the 'Hear, See and Treat' model of emergency care, which is all about improving the way people access emergency services. You can watch this video to find out more about the 'Hear, See and Treat' model.
In Summer 2016 the six Healthwatch supported public and patient engagement for 'Hear, See and Treat' in partnership with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service. Overall, 147 face-to-face sessions were held across Harrogate and West Yorkshire. In addition to the outreach sessions, Healthwatch used Facebook, Instagram and third party website advertising to promote the video. Over 306,600 people saw the adverts and 137,437 people viewed the video.
To find out more about the engagement process for 'Hear, See and Treat' visit Healthwatch Kirklees's website. You can also view further work carried out by Healthwatch in Autumn 2016 here.
Paediatric Ambulatory Care Evaluation Report
