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.
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.
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We want everyone with a learning disability who lives in West Yorkshire and Harrogate to have the same opportunities as everyone else. We want people to live long and healthy lives and be treated with dignity and respect. We think it is important for people to have good relationships with others. We want everyone to have a place they call home in their community.
In line with NHS England’s Transforming Care Programmes, we are looking at how best we can provide and deliver community services, including homes and housing, support and care so people can live the life they chose with the support they need. In order to do this we are working together with our three Transforming Care programmes with the aim to support people with learning disabilities as close to home as possible and to keep them well and out of hospital.
If and when somebody does need an admission for specialist hospital care (such as assessment and treatment) we will work to ensure that specialist staff are available and that people are not in hospital any longer than they need to be. Together we will be looking at how we can work across organisational and geographical boundaries in relation to assessment, treatment unit services. We are engaging with service users who are currently living in an assessment and treatment centre (ATU), their families/carers and staff and also people with previous lived experience of an assessment and treatment centre and their families/carers.
Learning Disability colleagues have been working with NHS England’s ‘Experts on Tour’ team. The three ATU providers and some of our community services who support people with learning disabilities and complex mental health and/or behaviour that challenges met with the team at the beginning of February. The team of experts acted as a ‘critical friend’ and helped shape current and future thinking about quality assurance models, how to increase carer engagement and co-production. Colleagues also reflected on the need to make sure there is good communication across the wider health and social care system in relation to the recognised interdependencies that ATU provision has on community services.
A third staff engagement workshop has also taken place to look at current staffing models , particular challenges faced and how future staffing models might work as we collaborate across a wider footprint.
The Partnership, together with an organisation called Change, ran a workshop in December 2018 to look at learning disabilities and health inequalities, and at solutions to make things better. You can read the report from that workshop here.
All the organisations in our partnerships are working together to make things better for everyone. We will keep people well and support people to improve their health.
We will make people’s experiences of health and care better.
We will make the most of our staff and use their skills and expertise.
We will make the best use of the money we have to give everyone the best care possible.
Click here to download or read our leaflet about working together to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities
The learning disabilities health and care champions work is well underway. Work to date includes attendance at the Partnership Board in September.
We have showed the work we are doing with learning disability health champions to NHS England and colleagues across the country.
We are now looking for health and care champions to work on prevention and early diagnosis, planned care and cancer. These themes are in line with what people with learning disabilities and our partners have said are important to them. Professor Sean Duffy and Julie Honeybell from the Cancer Alliance Team have already met with people in Bradford to talk about their experience of cancer screening and early diagnosis.
Transforming Care is about the government and health and social care organisations working together.
Care will be made better for people with learning disabilites, especially if they have mental ill health too.
More people will be able to live in the community, close to their homes. They will get the right support for them.
Transforming Care is a national priority. This means that it is very important for every area in the country to work on.
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 West Yorkshire 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 close to where their friends and families live.
This year (2019) we looked at the way 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. You can find out more here and read a report about when we talked to people about ATUs here. An equality impact assessment has been completed and is available on request.
Over the next few months we will be looking at the way we provide care in our areas. We will work out how we can share our skills and resources to give everyone a better service.
At the moment there are 22 beds for people with learning disabilities in ATU’s in West Yorkshire.
We will be looking at how we can have less than 22 beds. We want to support more people in their own homes and close to where their friends and families are.
We will make sure that we talk to people who go to ATU’s and their families and carers.
We will also talk to staff who work in the services and other people who are involved.
It is important that people help us to develop our plans to change the future of mental health and learning disability services in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Here's a report about when we talked to people about assessment and treatment units in 2019
Some of our local health and care partners are running a project in to improve inclusion and access to health services for LGBTQ+ people with the additional needs of learning disabilities, mental health and autism. For part of the project there will be 6 workshops for LGBTQ+ people who have a learning disability. There will be 6 workshops and the first workshop will be on 7th August.
Find out more about the workshops here
