Our work with the community and voluntary sector

Read about how community and voluntary sector are helping people in West Yorkshire and Harrogate during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic - just look for the 'Community heroes' section on our Coronavirus information and resources page.

Across West Yorkshire and Harrogate, we've seen a surge in volunteers over the past few months in response to the Covid-19 crisis. These new volunteers are building on the already strong network of people who give their time, skills and commitment to help others.

This Volunteers' Week, 1 to 7 June 2020, we're celebrating the difference volunteers make.
Read volunteers' own stories in this bulletin and on our volunteer stories page here.

Working alongside our communities is an important part of our partnership - seeing the people we serve as assets. Working alongside local communities, ward councillors, council colleagues, voluntary community organisations and many others is essential if we are to fully understand the real value of early help and self-care.

There is a wealth of expertise across West Yorkshire and Harrogate and communities are better placed than us to know what they need and to make positive change happen. If we are to genuinely work alongside communities as equal partners, then we need to change our relationships and build trust. We have good leadership from the voluntary sector, and we are attracting support from Healthwatch, NHS England, Nurture Development and National Voices to help us to think about our next steps.

To make sure our work adds the greatest value possible and supports existing projects and groups across the area we started with a number of design workshops in the summer. The aim of these were to agree a shared set of principles and a common understanding of what we mean by ‘communities doing more for themselves’, ‘co-production’, ‘asset based community development’, ‘co-design’ etc., and what the shared ambition for working with communities should be. This includes:

Co-produce and co-design an approach with communities
Work with programmes to ensure good voluntary and community sector representation on all of our work streams
Inspire NHS senior leadership to be ambassadors for the work
Consider how the services we commission and procure might improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of the area in commissioning and contracting across West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Raise the profile of and share the excellent work taking place across the area - celebrate the difference this is making in our communities on a regional and national level.

Harnessing the power of our communities

Our vision

Our vision is to establish a new relationship with our communities built around good work on the co-production of services and care.Our intention is to support people to greater self-care, prevent ill-health, and the implementation of the Five Year Forward View to join-up our community services.

Outcomes

VCS and public sector working more collaboratively in order to support and encourage local people to live healthier lives
Developing talent within the VCS
Influencing policy development and the co-design of services
Identify gaps in provision and communicating this to partners
Ensuring the most hard to reach people within communities are heard

In order to establish our Harnessing the Power of Communities leadership group, Terms of Reference (ToR) have been developed to describe the purpose, scope and governance of the group. The ToR is the roadmap to deliverying our strategy by identifying key partners, their roles and responsibilities and committment to the programme.

You can also read more in our ‘VCS2020’ strategy.

NHS Long Term Plan (LTP) and Harnessing the Power of Communities (HPoC) showcase event

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

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