Posted on: 22 July 2022
Hello, my name is Beverley.
It’s a pleasure to write my first leadership message for the Partnership to tell you a little bit about me, and my role working alongside colleagues for West Yorkshire communities.
I always wanted to be a nurse, I trained in both general and mental health nursing and have been a registered nurse for over 30 years. I have worked in several acute hospitals across the region, including being Chief Nurse at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and before this at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
I’m delighted to be taking up this unique opportunity and feel very proud to be part of a partnership working with colleagues across Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield District to deliver health system transformation. It is an incredibly exciting challenge for me.
It probably goes without saying that nursing has been my lifelong profession, and I feel privileged to be one of over 500,000 nurses in the UK who work in many settings which include hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, hospices, communities, and education. Whilst many nurses work for the NHS, there are also huge numbers working in the social care sector and privately. In West Yorkshire there are over 10,000 NHS adult and community nurses. Over 800 of them work in GP surgeries and around 1,000 are employed by registered care homes. As well as this number 2,000 nurses work in mental health, with over 150 caring for people with learning disabilities. Approximately 1,200 are children nurses, with over 100 working in schools.
There are also over 1,000 (whole time equivalent) midwives working in West Yorkshire, supporting women and their families to have a healthy pregnancy and safe birth.
Nurses and midwives play a vital role in the delivery of care at all levels and whilst it is an incredibly rewarding career, the challenges in nursing and midwifery are common. I believe that these challenges can make nursing and midwifery two of the most demanding professions there are.
No matter where you chose to be a nurse or midwife, what we all have in common is the passion to do a great job and above all to keep people healthy and well. Caring for people when they are at their most vulnerable and offering support to them in a compassionate way are the foundation blocks of our profession.
During my career I have been lucky enough to work with, and to learn from, some of the best nurses and midwives and allied health professionals (AHP) in care. However, I recognise that all health and care disciplines need support to be able to continue to deliver the care that we would want to give.
As a Partnership our top priority is to ensure that we look after, value and develop teams and colleagues whilst we continue to grow the workforce of the future. Nurses, midwifes and AHP’s are no exception. This means ensuring we have enough staff with good wellbeing support, excellent training, and supervision in place. It also means making sure we have a diverse workforce reflective of the communities we serve and who understand the needs of all people.
We want to have a workforce that is looked after, feels valued and respected, as set out in our Partnership’s People Plan. We also want our teams to be supported by compassionate leaders so that people from all backgrounds can develop life-long careers within our system.
We are currently developing a strategy for the future workforce. In June 2021 we began an integrated rotational trainee nursing associate (TNA) pilot programme aimed at reducing the pressure on hospital emergency department admissions to maximise opportunities to escalate and refer patients to neighbouring services in a way that prevents them from becoming acutely unwell. Our TNA Programme continues to be expanded across West Yorkshire with take up of the apprenticeship with 455 TNAs currently on the programme. An additional 100 new trainees began their new roles in March 2022.
We are making the most of Health Education England investment to support the development of cancer nurse specialist and chemotherapy nurse development. This programme of work is in collaboration with Macmillan Cancer Support to grow and transform the cancer workforce, including newer cancer care coordinator and pathway navigator support roles as well as advancing clinical practice for nurse and Allied Health Professionals.
As well as this we are recruiting nurses internationally, which brings expertise into West Yorkshire. We are doing this by putting the nurse at the centre to ensure we only recruit from places where there is a supply above local need and that we support their journey from the moment they decide to come to the UK. This is from training and travel, into practice and further providing pastoral support and mentoring alongside practical help when settling into a new place of work. The existing community of over 2,000 international nurses in West Yorkshire is diverse, representing the people they serve, bringing knowledge and skills in the care of patients and vital to delivery of care.
Alongside the traditional recruitment campaigns that continue, we have also adopted solutions to raise awareness of the many roles that exist within the health and care sector. For example, in mental health we regularly hold virtual recruitment fairs, which have attracted over 400 attendees via a targeted social media campaign. This is not only good news for patients but great for the local economy with many people being recruited locally to work in their neighbourhoods and communities. Our local places are also running various outreach programmes within school, colleges, and other local community groups to raise awareness of the range of careers within health and care and targeting specific recruitment initiatives within communities which is also supporting social and economic development.
My work priorities sit within the clinical and professional directorate of the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), working closely with Dr James Thomas, the ICB Medical Director. Together we cover many functions, including children and young people, the local maternity system programme, clinical leadership, quality of care, patient safety, personalised care, and the unpaid carers programme, to name a few.
Over the coming months my focus will be to work alongside colleagues from across the system to ensure we improve the quality and safety of care delivered across all sectors, whilst addressing the inequalities people face – this will be incredibly varied given our scope and scale.
I truly believe the teams within our system will continue to rise to the challenge, and I am very much looking forward to working with you all, irrespective of your role, to carry on making a positive difference to peoples’ lives and our communities.
Thank you for reading my first message to you all.
Have a good, safe weekend,
Beverley
What else has been happening this week?
Supporting better safer care for more than 207,000 patients in 2021-22
Over the past year, more than 207,000 patients have benefited from better, safer care through the collaborative work of the Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) and its partners.
The pandemic continues to pose considerable challenges for the healthcare system increasing pressure on the workforce and service delivery. It has also highlighted the essential role of innovation in helping the sector to recover and prepare for the future.
The AHSN work with NHS partners, healthtech innovators and life sciences companies has supported programmes and initiatives to help improve patient care outcomes and increase efficiency in healthcare delivery. Read their latest Impact Report 2021-22 to find out how.
Richard Stubbs, Chief Executive of Yorkshire & Humber AHSN and Vice Chair of the AHSN Network, said: “There are five critical themes that are common to challenges being faced by all our NHS partners that permeate across our work: supporting the NHS’s post-pandemic recovery; advocating for levelling up as a driver for inclusive economic growth; addressing health inequalities; improving equality, diversity, and inclusion; and acting against climate change.
“Ultimately it is our job to connect innovators, NHS partners and academia to help identify, develop, and implement solutions that can help to tackle these challenges for the benefit of patients, healthcare staff and the communities we serve”.
Rob Webster, CEO Lead for West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, said: “The Yorkshire & Humber AHSN is fundamentally an expert partner in using innovative approaches to benefit people needing care and support. Our relationship with our AHSN has demonstrated how, by working together, we can really make a success of innovation, and how this can make a huge difference to people’s lives across West Yorkshire” Find out more in this brief video interview with Rob Webster
Are you all hands in for a better future?
Meat free Mondays are a great way to take the first step towards tackling climate change.
“My name is Dr Matt Sawyer and I work as a GP. Helping to tackle climate change is important to me because without a healthy functioning natural world, we will not have the habitable space, clean air, and water we need as humans to survive.
The small things I do daily to reduce my carbon footprint are walk rather than drive for short distances, take the train for long distances including holidays and reduce energy use by wearing jumpers and reducing the heating or switching off all electronic kit and equipment when not in use.
When shopping, I buy local and seasonal food produce whenever I can and aim for zero air-freighted food.
My pledge for All Hands in for a better future is eating as little meat as possible. I aim to have at least 6 days meat free each and every week.”
Climate change is a big issue. Start by picking one thing. Start small and start now. Visit allhandsin.co.uk to find out more ways to tackle climate change.
Climate change toolkit launched by the Partnership
The Partnership is supporting primary care providers such as GPs, pharmacy, dentistry, and eye health across West Yorkshire to address climate change within their organisations by launching a climate change toolkit. For many people, their first point of contact with the health service is through primary care.
In May we asked over 100,000 staff and volunteers to be ‘All hands in for a better future’ when we launched our first climate change campaign. The toolkit is an extension to this work and provides West Yorkshire healthcare providers with guidance and resources to address climate change.
Climate change poses a major threat to everyone’s future and is one of West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership's big ten ambitions and where we aspire to become a global leader. For the Partnership to lead the way in responding to the climate crisis, and to meet our vitally important goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2038, we are committed to making fundamental changes to the way we work, through increased investment, mitigation, and culture change throughout the local health and care system.
The toolkit covers key areas including: understanding carbon; cutting carbon; cutting costs and improving health; community regeneration and primary care in a changing climate. It also includes simple things that healthcare providers can do that can start to make a big difference such as calculating their carbon footprint, using the green impact for health toolkit to reduce it, and taking advantage of local sustainability grants.
Much more work is planned to ensure West Yorkshire primary care providers are equipped to make sustainable swaps that are best for the environment. The upcoming ‘green plan’ for primary care will outline what this looks like, as well as shining a light on some of the incredible work already underway. The online primary care climate change toolkit is available to download by visiting the website bit.ly/
Our journey to become an organisation of sanctuary
Our Partnership aspires to become the first Partnership of Sanctuary. Using the ‘City of Sanctuary’ core principles of ‘learn’ ‘embed’ and ‘share’, we want to ensure that our health and care services are safe, welcoming, and accessible and where West Yorkshire is a county where refugees, migrants and asylum seekers can flourish, thrive, and live healthy lives. Many asylum seekers and refugees have been exposed to traumatic experiences, may have endured life-threatening journeys in order to reach a place of safety and may find themselves destitute, with culture and language barriers making it difficult to navigate our health and social care systems.
In this video you can find out more about our journey and aspirations as we catch up with Partnership and City of Sanctuary colleagues as well as Wan and Ali who share their real-life experiences.
The Partnership's Children, Young People and Families’ Programme
The children, young people and families programme has been busy advancing its priorities for local communities. Through the best start and halting childhood obesity workstream, we saw the launch of the West Yorkshire ‘complications from excess weight’ service with the first face to face clinic held in June. This service is using innovation to address health inequalities and is helping to reducing stigma. We have also been focusing on prevention together with the Improving Population Health Programme and will be supporting healthy weights in children and young people by exploring an obesity strategy for West Yorkshire. The family resilience, early help workstream are working with Improving Population Health Programme held a system leadership trauma informed training session and continue to progress the foundation level training for the police, primary care and HMP Armley.
The long-term conditions group will establish an overarching group to explore common themes for children and young people with long terms conditions. Areas of focus may include access to psychology, transition, and equitable access to technology. In June, we had the opportunity to share best practice on children and young people's asthma at a national Asthma UK conference. Attendees were keen to learn more about our healthcare, affordable warmth, and housing work.
The children and young people diabetes group have been mapping the variation in continuous glucose monitoring arrangements across West Yorkshire for children and young people which means we have an opportunity to reduce inequity and variation in practice. The children’s healthcare in the community workstream successfully launched the ‘Healthier Together’ website and people are now using the site. This is key given the huge pressure and surge in attendance at emergency departments seen across West Yorkshire over recent weeks. Finally, we are relaunching our complex needs and SEND work and have a number of upcoming organisational development sessions to support this work and that of the overall programme.
West Yorkshire Communication and Involvement Network
Thank you to all colleagues who joined the tri-monthly network meeting of the network on Thursday. Special thanks to communication and involvement guest speakers who discussed Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership (local place-based working), Thrive By Design (coproducing community principles), Genomics Medicine Service Alliance and West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance.
All communication and involvement colleagues from across the patch are welcome to join the network by contacting wyhcommsand.
Making referrals to the NHS Low Calorie Diet Programme
The NHS Low Calorie Diet Programme is now being delivered across 21 Integrated Care Systems including a two-year pilot in West Yorkshire. Since our one-hour training events attended by over 200 colleagues in April and May, we’ve had 87 eligible referrals from across West Yorkshire.
Although we are making progress, we still need more referrals to meet the offer of 500 places. There is no limit to the number of patients a practice can refer, and the 500 places will be increased should demand be greater.
Trials show that total diet replacement (TDR) approaches are effective in supporting people with type 2 diabetes supporting healthier lifestyles, weight loss, and, in some cases, putting type 2 diabetes into remission.
Xyla, the provider carrying out the pilot in our area, has also received some referrals that are ineligible. This might be because they are missing information, or the patient does not meet the criteria. Everything practices need to make referrals is available on the NHS Low Calorie Diet Programme section of our diabetes communications resource portal. This includes a link to a video with Dr Waqas Tahir, the Clinical Diabetes Lead, showing how to fill in the referral form.
Leeds Health and Social Care Hub launches to improve outcomes across the region
A new Leeds and Social Care Hub launched on Tuesday to bring together the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and various local partners to improve health outcomes across the region.
The hub will bring together a community of experts to improve healthcare in the region for patients. Members of the public, private, and third sector organisations, including NHS, local government, universities, and other health organisations will work to address challenges including tackling health disparities and improving employment opportunities in the sector. This will ensure DHSC’s principal offices in Leeds are embedded in the region’s growing health industry and continue the work to make Leeds a national and international hub for the healthcare industry.
The aim is to position Leeds as the natural choice for professionals looking to pursue a career in health and social care spanning local government and public and private organisations, as well as for start-ups seeking to establish or expand their base in the city. This will help to retain and develop talent, all while providing a boost to the local economy. It will also promote the health and social care sector as a career of choice for residents and graduates, so that workforces reflect the communities they serve.