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.
Play British Sign Language Video
Close
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.
The health inequalities faced by people with learning disabilities (LD) in the UK start early in life and stem from barriers to accessing appropriate and effective health care and are therefore, to an extent, avoidable. The Learning Disability Premature Mortality Review (LeDeR) programme has highlighted that people with a learning disability still die much younger than the rest of the population (on average 20 years) and are three times more likely to die from causes that could have been avoided. Physical health checks and cancer screening can ensure that health problems are spotted earlier and, with the right type of care and support, treated effectively.
We have worked with our Partners in the health and care system to create new information for professionals to make sure that people with learning disabilities get the care they need, and information for people with learning disabilities that helps them take part in screening when offered.
Get more information and support for people with learning disabilities on this page from our partners at Bradford Talking Media and Mencap
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
On average, adults in England with learning disabilities face significant health inequality, poorer access to healthcare and they die earlier than the general population, at a median age of 59 years. You can find out more about this here.
Our Partnership has 10 Big Ambitions and one of those is to reduce the gap in life expectancy for autistic people, people with learning disabilities and people with mental health conditions by 10% by 2024. Achieving this ambition will make life better for more than 200 000 people living in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Across all of our places in West Yorkshire and Harrogate we have higher numbers of adults with a learning disability receiving long-term support from Local Authorities compared to the rest of England. We want to make access to healthcare easier and with this in mind, we are supporting our places to share good practice in how they make reasonable adjustments across their services for people with a learning disability and for people with autism – half of people with autism also have a learning disability and 30% of people with a learning disability also have an Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC).
One of the ways we are working to improve the experience of care for people with learning disabilities is through the national Learning Disability Improvement Standards. First published in 2018, the Standards guide hospital Trusts in how to support and respect people with learning disabilities. All Trusts in West Yorkshire and Harrogate are expected to publish performance against the Standards on an annual basis. Our Learning Disabilities Improvement Standards project will support Trusts to work collaboratively to meet the requirements of the Standards by 2023 / 2024.
Included in the requirements is that all care providers consider as part of their digital strategy how they will apply a digital flag to identify service users who have a learning disability and / or autism. This will help people arriving for care to have their needs recognised and met from the beginning of their treatment journey.
You can find out more about the national Learning Disability Improvement Standards here.
This work is carried out through the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Programme and is championed by the leadership team because of its importance across all of our services.
There’s more information about the work we are doing to develop meaningful support across our places for people with learning disabilities in our strategy document here and an easy read version here.
One of the key workstreams of the West Yorkshire & Harrogate Personalised Care programme is to co-produce what good personalised care looks like for people with a learning disability. Jayne Heley from NHS England and Improvement Personalised Care Group is providing leadership and support working with Primary Care Networks and coproducing with people with a learning disability. The workstream will focus on; a) Social Prescribing and test what good looks like b) Supporting the quality and uptake of Annual Health Checks so that physical health checks for at least 75% of people aged over 14 years can be offered c) Exploring Shared Decision Making. Digital personalised approaches are also being explored. Jayne is supporting and implementing the commitments of the NHS Long Term Plan and considering alternative offers of support for people with Learning Disabilities.
If you are interested to know more, please contact Jayne at Jayne.heley@nhs.net
In 2019, some of our local health and care partners ran 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 were 6 workshops for LGBTQ+ people who have a learning disability.
Find out more about the workshops here
