This week’s leadership message comes from Duncan Cooper, one of our colleagues who was on the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme

Posted on: 15 October 2021

Duncan Cooper Hello everyone, my name is Duncan.

I joined the Partnership as my final placement on the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme. I’ve since remained within the Partnership as an information analyst where among other things I support the Local Maternity System (LMS) in developing its access and understanding of quality data. I’m proud of the input I’ve had in the LMS as we’ve come far in how we use data, and the journey continues to develop our insight.

When I joined the LMS in 2018, the LMS accessed a small amount of data that responded to national and regional mandated requirements, with few processes established for considering the data ourselves. Our primary source of data was the Yorkshire and Humber Clinical Network’s maternity benchmarking dashboard, which includes data on smoking/breastfeeding/preterm birth rates etc. Sharing information appropriately ensures that data can help transformation.

Where we are

I’ve been able to work closely with midwives, varied LMS workgroups and analysts, with the aim of improving the quality of our data. Now, these maternity indicators and more are considered by a wide audience of our stakeholders as the first order of business in many LMS meetings. While trying to embed data into everything that we do, the LMS dashboard has evolved into a view of 24, and counting, quality and safety indicators in domains of maternal safety, neonatal safety, personalisation, and public health. Many of these have been added to reflect the local quality improvement work that is carried out throughout the LMS.

It’s really positive when LMS groups contact me directly to suggest we add a new indicator because they want to see the LMS results and how their Trust contributes to system performance. Much of this data is published from different sources but bringing the data together into one place means that LMS stakeholders can quickly identify overall quality and safety. The LMS dashboard informs our quarterly quality and safety update, and the results are routinely presented at LMS meetings to start every conversation with ‘where are we now?’.

We’ve been able to apply our data to several quality improvement initiatives, tracking the implementation of continuity of carer, neonatal interventions and more. Last year the LMS carried out an audit to investigate factors that impacted delays to induction of labour, which was reported to be highly detrimental to women’s experience of maternity care. By sharing and appraising data, making changes to practice, and celebrating the results, the LMS is now an active participant in ensuring the safety and quality of maternity services. I’m pleased to say that by taking an active role in our LMS understanding of its data I’ve been able to influence the regional and national maternity teams. We are also planning on presenting our data approach to the Ugandan national health service as the Partnership’s LMS reaches international influence!

Where we’re heading

MIdwife and baby As the LMS develops its quality assurance oversight role in line with the Ockenden report 2020 we are evaluating the additional data the LMS needs to consider, and how it should be presented. We plan to move the dashboard to a platform that will better disseminate our findings while we continue to add measures which add value at a system level.

The LMS is currently producing an equity strategy to identify health inequalities and co-produce actions to address them. An especially exciting area is our growing access to health inequalities data.

Assessing and tackling inequalities has always been an ambition of the LMS. However, we’ve had limited access to data that supports this; there is only one measure on the existing LMS dashboard which is specific to a patient cohort (women from Black and Asian minority ethnic backgrounds booked or placed onto CoC pathways). Recently the clinical commissioning groups in West Yorkshire have implemented a data sharing agreement that allows NHS Digital’s nationally mandated maternity dataset to be shared between all CCGs, providing the LMS with access to anonymised individual level data. Although the dataset is still in development, this means that we could, for the first time, compare differences in the care and outcomes received by specific cohorts of women.

Breaking down measures by ethnic background, deprivation of residence and the intersectionality between the two will be the most detailed view of inequalities data that the LMS has ever had. Early sharing of this work with the national maternity team has already influenced the development of the regional maternity dashboard to include health inequalities.

The improved access to higher quality data, together with an increasing appetite for deploying the data to improve patient care means it’s an exciting time to be working with maternity data in WY&H. We’ve come a long way in our approach to data and I look forward to seeing how much further the LMS will go.

Finally, many thanks to the wonderful work of midwives and analysts who lay the foundation for this work by generating the data, as well as the Yorkshire and Humber Clinical Network and Yorkshire and Humber Neonatal Operational Delivery Network who collate and disseminate it.

Have a good weekend,
Duncan

Welcome to our new chair of the integrated care board

Cathy Elliott has been appointed new chair designate for the new NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board when it takes on statutory responsibilities as anticipated from April 2022.

Cathy comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience, which includes being the Unitary Board Chair of Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust and Co-chair of West Yorkshire and Harrogate Integrated Care System (ICS) Reference Group for Council Leaders and NHS Chairs – which is an advisory group for the ICS on the new health and care legislation proposals.

Cathy said: ‘I am delighted to have been confirmed as Chair-Designate for the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board when it takes on statutory responsibilities from April 2022. West Yorkshire has an established track record of very strong system leadership and working across health and care, being held up as a leading national best practice example. It has a clear vision and strong ambitions to support people to have the best start in life, so they can live a long, happy and healthy one’.

‘The work to date in West Yorkshire is built on solid foundations, including already setting out our transformation priorities, in delivering a response to the pandemic in partnership, and in working with partners and communities to address extreme inequalities and variation in people's life outcomes. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to help steer the system in the further delivery of our ambitions to help improve the lives of everyone living and working across this great area. I am very much looking forward to working with West Yorkshire’s partners and communities’.

What else has been happening this week?

Connected on inclusion awards

A huge ‘well done’ to everyone who arranged our first Connected on Inclusion Awards last Friday, and to all who were recognised for their contributions within, and beyond the Race Equality Network, to all our colleagues from ethnic minority communities and their allies. Thank you to everyone who is working hard to put inclusion at the heart of all you do. The winners were:

Ally of the year

Sam Kelly, Highly commended (System leadership and development for the Partnership)

Alan Davis, Winner (South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust)

Making a positive difference

Race equality awards online event (screenshot) John Walsh, Highly commended (Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust)

BTHFT Chaplaincy, Winner (Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust)

Role model of the year

Cherill Watterson, Highly commended (South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust)

Nasar Haq Winner (Spectrum, Wakefield)

Influencer of the year

Zeshaan Ejaz, Highly commended (Airedale NHS Foundation Trust)

Fatima Khan Shah, Winner (Partnership’s programme director for personalised care and unpaid carers)

Team of the Year

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, Finance team, Highly commended

Kirklees Community First, Winner

Race equality champion of the year

Maysoon Shafiq, Highly commended Founder and Director Al Mu’Minun charity (Kirklees).

Bhana Abboobaker, Winner (South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust)

Inspiring colleague(s) of the year

Leeroy Golding and Sasha Bhat, Highly commended (NHS Bradford District Care Trust, Bradford district and Craven)

Ester Jamera, Winner (Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust)

Innovation and change champion of the year

Race equality awards online event (screenshot) Madi Hoskin, Highly commended (West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts)

Balagopal Krushrak Kumar, Winner (Lister Lane Surgery GP Leeds)

Advocate of the year

Sam Kelly, Highly commended (system leadership and development for the Partnership)

Jo Farn, Winner (system leadership and development for the Partnership)

Special Recognition

Fatima Khan Shah, Highly commended (Partnership’s programme director for personalised care and unpaid carers)

Penny Wangrai-Jones, Winner Racial Justice Network Bases in Leeds and Bradford/ VCSE

Network Chairs Award

Sayma Mirza, Winner (system leadership and development for the Partnership).

Black History Month

Throughout Black History Month, Mid Yorkshire NHS Hospitals Trust are reaffirming its support for #WYHRootOutRacism, as members of their executive board made their pledges toward the movement – including CEO, Len Richards, and Chief Operating Officer Trudie Davis.

Len Richards anti racism pledge 2021 Trudie Davis anti racism pledge 2021

Unpaid carers programme

The Unpaid Carers Programme Board met Wednesday 6 October, chaired by joint senior responsible officer. Karen Jackson, to explore how we can better support unpaid carers within primary care and acute care settings.

To open the meeting, the programme team provided a high-level overview of the current programme position, highlighting that, during the last quarter, the programme has made significant progress in supporting young carers with the launch of the young carers app and, more recently, the developing of the Young Carers Cookbook. This was co-designed and developed with young carers across West Yorkshire with several launch events planned in late October across our local places.

The programme also announced that it has been shortlisted for two HSJ awards; ‘System led support for carers’ and ‘Connecting Information Award’ for the programmes work on the COVID-19vaccination project where the partnership supported over 50,000 carers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and register for longer term support through their local carer organisations and primary care. NHS England and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) both recognise that the role of being a carer can sometimes lead to increased anxiety and depression, as well as injury and poor physical health. 38% of young carers report having a mental health problem. The programme presented guidance to support systems on how to better understand how each of the six components of universal personalised care can be used to support unpaid carers. Identifying someone as a carer and using personalised approaches to engage and support them can contribute to improving carers’ health and wellbeing. Clinical chair, Dr Steven Cleasby presented an overview to the GP Survey Results for 2021 outlining the key outcomes from the results specific to West Yorkshire, including NHS Bradford District and Craven Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Calderdale CCG, Kirklees CCG, Leeds CCG, and Wakefield CCG. Place based representation supported the discussion by sharing good local practice highlighting opportunities to duplicate at scale.

The Programme Board invited Louise McKelvey from the Urgent and Emergency Care Programme to open a discussion around winter pressures, admission avoidance, and the coordinated delivery of the winter plan, including opportunities for the programme to contribute to the development of the narrative, specifically looking at demand, capacity and the national 10-point plan. To aid the discussion the programme team provided a summary of the ‘Carers’ experiences of hospital discharge’ discharge to assess model.

Primary and Community Care Programme Board

An update was provided on the recent NHS Operational Planning and Contracting Guidance and H2 Planning at the last meeting. The priorities set out in March 2021 remain for primary care with a clear focus on primary care access.

For community health services, the emphasis continues establishing two hours urgent community response services, support for care homes, and supporting discharge from hospital. In addition, the Partnership’s Chairs and CEOs Community Provider Collaborative will be holding their second meeting next week and will review proposals for potential further joint working across our Partnership on the community workforce and rehabilitation for people’s care.

Steve Ollerton, Primary Care Clinical Lead and Kathryn Giles (programme lead) provided an update from the Clinical Director Reference Group (CDRG) that took place last week. A virtual/central space for discussion, sharing key documents, reviewing action status and suggested agenda topics is in progress and will be finalised shortly. The CDRG was supported by facilitation at the last two sessions and it was great to see good engagement and ideas flowing.

The Board also discussed the proposed recommendations from clinical directors for development support funding.

A recent Healthwatch report highlighted people’s frustrations accessing appointments and this was discussed by Board members.

Dr. Rammina Yassaie was welcomed to the Board. Rammina has temporally joined the programme as a clinical fellow and will be leading a project to better understand clinical triage and care navigations models at the front door of general practice and the impact of this on capacity and demand, workload, workforce, and patient experience. Rammina will be connecting with key stakeholders and local place-based leads to take forward the work.

The next board meeting will take place on 14 December.

Communication and engagement network

Communication and engagement colleagues met on Thursday via an online meeting. Colleagues discussed campaign planning, including the work of diabetes, mental health, digital and cancer. There was also an update on the draft principles of how the network works together.

National Cholesterol Month

National Cholesterol Month aims to prevent premature deaths caused by high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, learn more about why high cholesterol is dangerous on our Healthy Hearts web pages.

Healthy Hearts

The pandemic has impacted us all in different ways, placing even more importance on looking after our health and mental wellbeing. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the world’s number one killer. In England CVD is the biggest cause of death and disability with 1 death every 4 minutes, it accounts for the largest gap in health life expectancy. The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts team is continuing to work with primary care, regional and national CVD clinical leads and other healthcare organisations across the region to support the work of primary care in reducing the risk of CVD focusing on three key risk factors including cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes.

healthy hearts family The project had been making excellent progress prior to COVID-19, including around 16,000 additional patients being added to hypertension registers and nearly 22,000 patients with blood pressure better controlled. Inevitably COVID-19 delayed some of this excellent early work. The area which appears most worrying is the number of patients with hypertension who have not had their blood pressure recorded in the past 12 months which stands at 85,000 patients (an additional 40,000 patients under the age of 80 and 8,000 additional patients over 80 since April 2020). The team is working closely with colleagues across the region to develop further resources and educational events that could facilitate the work of GPs. A key area of activity has been to monitor the impact of the work through dashboards looking at data for primary care networks (PCNS) and practices. This has made clear the impact that COVID-19 has had on patients in primary care. More information is available here.

A series of webinars will take place during November aimed at practice managers, primary care network (PCN) clinical directors, GPs, pharmacists, nurse prescribers and healthcare assistants. The aim is to provide an overview of the national, regional, and local CVD resources available to support primary care networks with CVD management, including how the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN and Community Pharmacy can support this work.

'CVD Management in Primary Care' webinars are scheduled to take place on: Tue 09 Nov from 12.30 to 13,30 (register here); Thu 18 Nov from 12.30 to 13.30 (register here); Wed 24 Nov from 12.30 to 13.30 (register here)

Every second counts when someone is in cardiac arrest The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts is an initiative delivered by Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) working in partnership with West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and the local Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Restart a heart day

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust are marking Restart a Heart Day from today by returning to Yorkshire’s secondary schools to carry out face-to-face CPR training to around 30,000 young people after COVID-19 forced last year’s event online.

This year, following the high-profile resuscitation of Christian Eriksen at the Euros, the service has also secured the support of Yorkshire’s top 10 football league clubs.

Mental health, learning disabilities and autism programme news

Psychological Professions Workforce Strategy front cover Now published, the West Yorkshire & Harrogate Psychological Professions’ Workforce Strategy aims to identify and meet the challenges facing the psychological professions now and in the future, including the targets set in the NHS Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and the NHS Long Term Plan.

Prior to the pandemic there was increasing demand for access to psychological therapies, with people wanting safe and effective services that provided a choice of treatment and support. The Psychological Professions are all key roles in trying to address this demand for psychologically informed care, influencing and shaping the development of services, delivering therapeutic activity and evaluating impact. We are committed to developing a workforce which reflects the communities that we serve. Representation and inclusion are key, as is ensuring that the services we provide meet the diverse needs of our communities. You can find out more about the Strategy on our website.

Jobseekers flocked to our virtual recruitment fair

South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds and Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trusts, supported by West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership worked together to deliver an innovative and exciting virtual recruitment fair that attracted 549 attendees from a wide range of backgrounds and with many different skills and experience.

Event visitors were impressed by the significant number of partners who took part in the event and there was an opportunity for attendees to pose questions to directly to them at 15 virtual recruitment booths. Other participating partners included University of Huddersfield – Learning Disability Nursing, PATH Yorkshire, NHS Employers, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, People matters, Princes Trust Wakefield College, Recovery and Wellbeing Colleges, Voluntary Action Leeds, South West Yorkshire Partnership Foundation Trust staff networks and Generation UK. Delegates were impressed by the choice of 22 webinars offered at the event.

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