Posted on: 9 October 2020
This week’s leadership message is a video blog from Rob Webster, CEO at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SWYPFT) and Lead CEO for West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership. Our Black History Month blog this week is from Cherill Watterston, a specialist physiotherapist at SWYPFT and chair of the Trust's BAME staff network.
Celebrating Black History Month
To celebrate Black History Month and importantly recognise the work and talent of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff, our Partnership will continue to raise the profile of its diverse workforce during October. As part of our ongoing commitment to diversify the leadership of partner organisations, we have given BAME staff a platform to raise their profile during Black History Month. This includes celebrating the work of BAME staff through weekly blogs, podcasts, with contributors from across West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership and Twitter takeover days.
This week’s Black History Month blog comes from Cherill Watterston who works at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SWYPFT) as a specialist physiotherapist. Cherill is also the chair of the SWYPFT BAME staff network.
Hello my name is Cherill, are you sitting comfortably?
What do you see when you look at me? A hairdresser, a beauty therapist? Things I have heard many times. Or do you see a mother, a wife, someone that loves reading, music and art? Do you see an ‘A star student’, someone that always works hard and fights for what they believe in? Do you see a psychologically informed practice enthusiast, a clinician that wants to understand the world of those that she supports so that she can give the best possible care? Do you see a compassionate leader whose values are everything, someone that aims to treat everyone how she would like to be treated, with kindness, understanding and respect? Do you see me or do you see a projection of what you think I am based on your own assumptions?
My heritage is Caribbean/South American/White British/Scottish. Or to break it down simply I am what some call mixed race. I was born in 1978, and to grow up in Britain through the racial unrest that existed in the 80’s was no joke. We live in a society where racial politics is rife but often hidden just below the surface. If you are white you probably grew up not thinking about yourself in racial terms because you didn’t have to. Race is something for ethnic minorities to think about right? If you are from a BAME community you may be aware but also maybe not. Understanding and accepting the racial dynamics that exist in this country can be a bitter pill to swallow.
The British Empire was built on colonialism, acquiring control over other countries and then exploiting their resources for economic gain. Human beings were a valuable resource and it is easier to exploit them if the narrative is that they are dangerous, naturally inferior, lack intelligence and in need of control. A very clear divide was created classifying people on the colour of their skin in order to increase profit.
This system of classification is still present today, however it is less overt making it difficult for some to see and even harder to discuss. The long-lasting ripples from The Empire are evident in the infrastructure of our society. We are socialised to believe that white is the norm and anything is else is “other”. These messages are everywhere. The media, the language we use, the history that we are taught. It manifests itself in health inequalities and the experiences of our Black, Asian minority and ethnic (BAME) workforce in terms of discrimination and the inability to progress.
So what happens when you are a product of these categories mixing? Something that was and still can be seen as problematic. A report called an investigation into the colour problem in Liverpool and other ports was written in the 1930s stating that mixed race children had little future and were practically an abomination. This report has had a significant negative impact on the long term perception of children of mixed heritage and the ideas it presented were widely held. What happens is that you struggle to fit in. You struggle to find your identity. Society as a whole doesn’t place high expectations upon you.
I am regularly underestimated in my ability, skills and knowledge and experience microaggression as a result. I was on a BAME Leadership Academy course and we were asked to put ourselves into groups. Those of mixed heritage amongst us gravitated together to share experiences. One of the group said “White people see the black in you and black people see the white in you”. I heard that. I have experienced discrimination from both. Racial politics runs deep and we are still paying the emotional debt for a socially constructed economic system that categorised us based upon the amount of melanin that we have in our skin.
So when you look at me, look again. Do you really see me? Or do you see a projection of what you think you know based on your own assumptions?
Thank you for reading my blog as part of Black History Month and have a safe weekend.
Cherill
What's been happening this week?
Suicide reduction: staff campaign
The suicide reduction staff campaign project team met last Friday. This is made up of colleagues from across the area, including the NHS, councils, Healthwatch and people with experience of suicide.
During September, a series of co-creation workshops were held to shape the campaign, which is due to launch end of November. There were 38 participants across a diverse range of roles including directors, CEOs, GPs, nurses, communications leads and a keen interest in attendance from those in mental health and psychology roles. Each workshop was supported by a specialist from the suicide prevention team or / and the Samaritans. Staff across all Partnership areas were invited to attend and participants represented Huddersfield, Leeds, Airedale, Bradford, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, South West Yorkshire.
A presentation detailing the findings and including anonymous stories from colleagues who have lived-experience of suicide was presented to the project team. The findings include staff perceptions on normalising the conversation, at risk groups, barriers, delivery methods, campaign ideas, resource mapping and recommendations for the campaign strategy. The next steps include developing the campaign plan and timelines.
‘Looking out for our neighbours’: phase three of the campaign
Building upon the success of the previous campaign, this winter’s 2020 campaign will be a digital marketing and social media campaign that will launch early November and will inspire positive action and signposting to services and resources for the following themes:
- Positivity
- Empathy
- Mental health and wellbeing
- Food poverty
- Self-care and looking out for others
We will be recruiting a panel of diverse neighbours from across our areas, with community reporters to develop this campaign and making the most of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Communication and Engagement Network as well as over 360 organisations, individuals who are community supporters to reach as many people as possible.
The West Yorkshire, Test, Trace, Isolate Programme
The West Yorkshire, Test, Trace, Isolate Programme met on Friday 2 October. It includes colleagues from public health and the NHS. The senior responsible officer for the programme is Martin Barkley, CEO for Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees have had further local restrictions longer than in some other areas. Wakefield and Leeds are seeing a significant increase, with wider community transmission including in student populations.
Testing capacity is the highest it has ever been and we are seeing a significant demand for tests. It is vital that university staff and students only get a test if they develop coronavirus symptoms. Local areas continue to establish walk-through sites and deployed mobile test sites so that almost all universities are within 3 miles of an in-person test site allowing staff and students to get access.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Clinical Forum
The Clinical Forum met virtually on Tuesday. The meeting was chaired by Dr James Thomas. Forum members include medical directors, GPs, pharmacists, allied health professionals, lead nurses and NHS England colleagues.
Forum members heard about the potential to develop an ‘Integration Index’ as a pilot area for NHS England. This is about building a better understanding of how people experience joined up care – between primary and secondary services, physical and mental health services, and NHS and social care services. We will have access to national expertise from the Kings Fund to support the work. Members supported the approach.
Forum members discussed respiratory disease which affects one in five people and is the third biggest cause of death in the England (after cancer and cardiovascular disease). Hospital admissions for lung disease have risen at three times the rate of admissions generally and are a major factor in winter pressures faced by the NHS. Incidence and mortality rates from respiratory disease are higher in disadvantaged groups and areas of social deprivation.
An initial West Yorkshire and Harrogate respiratory engagement event was held in September 2020, with a follow-up event scheduled for November 2020. The event was attended by primary and secondary care clinicians. Dr Katherine Hickman, a GP in Bradford, is the respiratory lead for the Partnership. Katherine explained long-term health conditions resulting from COVID-19 is an area of concern. Support from a respiratory manager has been put in place, alongside a quality improvement manager across Yorkshire with clinical leads for each integrated care partnership. Forum members agreed the proposal to establish a respiratory network for our Partnership and the importance of including community pharmacy colleagues. An update will be brought back to a future meeting.
In the summer of 2019, the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Digital Programme embarked on a journey to develop a digital strategy that clarifies the vision, principles and outlines the digital programme would take to delivering digital transformation across the Partnership. A key component of our digital strategy is shared care records. In July 2018 Yorkshire and Humber was awarded £7.5M in funding, by NHS England as an exemplar to kick-start a Local Health Care Record (LHCR) over 2 years. In this time the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR) programme has created a suite of solutions to facilitate the sharing of information across organisations in the region to improve care and the patient experience. Forum members agreed the importance of linking technology into the use of health inequalities so we can make informed population health decisions. Engagement with clinicians and social care colleagues, whilst ensuring people’s views are at the heart of our priority programme was discussed.
The next steps will be discussed at the Clinical Forum Steering Group as well as the Allied Health Professionals forum. This will include how best we engage and involve front line clinicians / colleagues.
The Joint Committee of the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)
The Joint Committee of the CCGs met in public on Tuesday, chaired by Marie Burnham, our independent lay chair. The Committee is made up of the West Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). It has delegated powers from the CCGs to make decisions on specific work programmes. You can read the papers here. Committee members welcomed two new lay members, Ruby Bhatti from Bradford, District and Craven CCG and John Mallalieu from Calderdale CCG.
The Yorkshire and Humber geographical footprint within which Yorkshire Ambulance Service is commissioned to provide integrated urgent and emergency services contains three Integrated Care Systems:
- Humber Coast and Vale
- South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw
- West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Committee members received an update on the Joint Strategic Partnership Board Principles for Integrated Commissioning. The Yorkshire Ambulance Service are a key partner in the development of integrated urgent and emergency services. There was an update on the assessment and treatment units for people with complex learning disabilities. This included an update on the revised engagement timeline. The engagement work on the proposal is expected to be completed by November 2020. You can read the paper here. And there is more here about the engagement work and how people can get involved.
System Leadership Executive Group
The Executive Group met on Tuesday. This involves leaders from all partner organisations, including councils, hospitals, clinical commissioning groups, Healthwatch and community organisations. It is chaired by Rob Webster, our Partnership CEO Lead. Leaders received an update on the outcomes from the System Oversight Assurance Group; planning for system stabilisation and reset; programme transformation and resourcing. There was also a discussion on developing the West Yorkshire and Harrogate People Plan; economic and social growth: the role of universities and the digital programme.
There are some excellent examples of joint working between universities in the region with NHS organisations and local authorities such as Born in Bradford, the suicide prevention work at the University of Huddersfield and the Leeds Academic Health Partnership. Regular meetings are now in place between members of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate System Leadership Executive Group and university Vice chancellor colleagues including Professor Shirley Congdon from the University of Bradford. Shirley led a discussion on the role of universities for economic and social growth. There are twelve partner university institutes across Yorkshire with over 60,000 students.
Leaders heard about the process that has been followed to produce a list of prioritised schemes for the Digital First Primary Care funding stream for years one and two of a funding stream up to 2023/24. In 2019/20 NHS England announced the Digital First Primary Care Funding Stream. A process was undertaken for organisations to submit expressions of interest and the following schemes were submitted and approved:
- Primary care network requirements
- GP online consultation communications and engagement
- myCOPD
West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT)
The West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) brings together the six acute trusts in West Yorkshire and Harrogate: Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
WYAAT colleagues continue to prepare for changes to specialised vascular services in West Yorkshire. A final readiness check to ensure all changes can be implemented safely while trusts continue to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for the winter months is underway.
Moving forward, all in-patient and acute vascular work for West Yorkshire will be undertaken at two arterial centres at Leeds General Infirmary and Bradford Royal Infirmary, whilst all trusts will continue to offer vascular day case surgery and interventional radiology, out-patient clinics and diagnostics.
Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative
The Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism collaborative continues to share work in relation to crisis pathways, including supporting people who access care, movement of staff between organisations and learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative is working on the launch of new provider collaborative commissioning arrangements for the adult eating disorders service. The service is commissioned and hosted by Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. The service is national good practice with elements being adopted by other systems across the country. These new commissioning arrangements will be extended to include provider collaborative arrangements for forensic and children and young people mental health care services next year.
Our Suicide Prevention Advisory Network Annual Review 2019-2020 and Annual Plan 2020-2021 will be published shortly, reinforcing our commitment to our ambition to reduce suicide in West Yorkshire and Harrogate by 10% across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate area, and by 75% in targeted areas. The report provides a review of the previous year’s developments (2019/2020) and outlines our work plan for the year 2020/2021. A key value underpinning all initiatives is that they are evidence based (or innovative and with a plan to evaluate) and make good use of resources, including funds.
The period 2019 -2020 saw an expansion in our suicide prevention work underpinned and supported by our wider and inclusive Suicide Prevention Advisory Network and Suicide Prevention Operational Group (formally referred to as the FONT, Federation of NHS Trusts).
Progress in the field of perinatal mental health is proceeding, with work underway on the development of a public-facing communications campaign aimed at raising awareness of perinatal mental health conditions, signs and symptoms among a wider audience with the aim of breaking down stigma and ensuring that women are able to access the help that they need.
We are also working alongside workforce colleagues to develop proposals to NHS England /NHS Improvement for enhanced mental wellbeing support for staff across all services in the Partnership and how these support and are enhanced by occupational health arrangements.
World Mental Health Day is a programme of the World Federation for Mental Health and is recognised by the World Health Organisation. First observed in 1992, the theme for this year’s event is 'mental health for all'. You can read more here including a quote from Dr Sara Munro and Wendy Tangen, a member of the Partnership’s BAME network.
Children and Young People Programme
The Partnership’s Children, Young People and Families Programme Board met on the 30 September. This was chaired by Beate Wagner, Corporate Director of Children and Young People’s Services at Wakefield Council and joint senior responsible officer (SRO) for the Programme. The other SRO is Tim Ryley, Chief Officer for NHS Leeds.
The Partnership’s BAME review was discussed and how we can support this from a children, young people and families programme perspective. The Board agreed that all existing workstreams would be reviewed to ensure a specific focus on BAME communities. Work will take place to map out what specific work relating to children and young people from BAME communities is already in place and how this can be shared and that we will ensure that the voice of children and young people from BAME communities shapes our work.
The Partnership’s ‘Fairer Society’ poem / animation which is narrated by young people was presented and received positively by the group. Discussions took place on how we can support getting this used by and shown in schools across the area.
Work is currently underway to establish a West Yorkshire and Harrogate young people’s voice platform to support engagement and co-production with the work of our Programme. We are doing this on an application basis and asked for short applications (written, voice note or video) by 7 October. Applications have been sent out via the Youth Voice Network and voluntary and community partners.
Updates were provided on each of the Programmes priority workstreams. The Board welcomed Caroline Mullins, our new project manager for our children’s healthcare in the community work.
A West Yorkshire and Harrogate Family Resilience and Early Help Group is in the process of being established with the first meeting taking place in October to develop clear outcomes for this workstream, to share challenges and good practice and scope out opportunities where as a Partnership we can work together.
Joint working is taking place with the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Prevention Network on taking a life course approach to healthy weight and embedding physical activity across West Yorkshire and Harrogate and with the Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Programme on the emotional wellbeing needs of children, young people and their families.
In partnership with the Improving Population Health Programme and the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Programme a Complex Childhood Trauma Steering Group is in place with the ambition ‘to work together across all sectors and organisations to make West Yorkshire and Harrogate a trauma informed and responsive system’. A life course and intergenerational approach is being undertaken along with a preventative approach looking at early interventions. In order to achieve the ambition the group have identified five subgroups to begin working on specific topics and expressions of interest are currently being requested for membership of these subgroups.
Sharing digital inclusion best practice
The Digital Programme held their first Digital Inclusion Workshop on 28 September in partnership with mHabitat. Colleagues from across the Partnership came together to hear about some of the great work taking place to make sure we can all benefit from digitally-enabled health and care.
There were sessions on:
- building digital skills
- the co-design process
- financial support
- increasing access to digital
- overcoming data problems.
The workshop also provided opportunities for breakout sessions to discuss current priorities and areas to focus on in the future. We’ll now carry out an exercise to determine a set of priorities which we can progress collectively. We’ll also be running a series of co-design workshops with people with lived experience in these priority areas to find ways to support them. More info about these and other exciting developments to follow soon.
iPad to boost access to NHS care for people in care homes
NHSX is providing tablet devices to care homes and helping them to improve their internet access, to ensure that everyone living in a care home in England can access video consultations and remote care when this is helpful. The tablets will also allow staff to access NHSmail, other tools or systems needed to support care as well as to connect care home residents with loved ones and access. This offer is one element of a package of support for care homes ahead of winter. Care homes must apply for a tablet before 23 October 2020.
New digital care planning tool available for pregnant women
The LMS has announced the launch of an exciting new digital tool that will be available to all expectant mums and their families in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
“My Pregnancy Journey” contains information about the choices available to pregnant women and their families, helping them to choose the provider of their antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care, and to make decisions about their care at these times.
My Pregnancy Journey is a digital tool that can be accessed on a variety of platforms, such as laptops, tablets and smartphones. It includes a BrowseAloud function and a Personalised Care Planning facility – for women to record their needs and choices.
It is available now on digital and in print and there is more information about the 'My Pregnancy Journey' digital tool on our website.