This week’s leadership message is a video blog from Dr Sal Uka

Primary and Community Care Programme Board

The Primary and Community Care Programme Board met virtually on this week.  The Programme Board last met in February 2020 and members took the opportunity to review progress of workstreams pre Covid-19.    Members discussed how to capitalise on the great partnership work that has taken place in primary and community care during Covid-19. The primary care themes of common interest that emerged from the Partnership World Café, including areas where = we can work collectively at a partnership level to add value was on the agenda.  This was considered alongside our key priorities in the primary care strategy.  

Board members welcomed a presentation from Dr Sarah Humphrey, Clinical Advisor, Yorkshire and Humber Dementia Clinical Network and Penny Kirk, Quality Improvement Manager on the excellent work undertaken in Advanced Care Planning.  A resource pack has been drafted to support staff across the Partnership to have conversations with people about their wishes for future care.  This is helpful for staff working in health, social care and voluntary and community organisations and across all care settings.  The final pack will be made available on the Partnership’s website in the coming weeks. Members also received a presentation from Pat Keane, Programme Director, Strategic Projects, Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Groups and Jane Close, Locala Community Partnerships on a community services capacity and demand model. The next board meeting will take place on the 11 August 2020.

News from the Improving Population Health Programme

The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health Inequalities Network met on 3 June, chaired by Dr Sohail Abbas, a GP and Clinical Director at Bradford District and Craven Clinical Commissioning Group. The network discussed its role in supporting the COVID-19 response in the immediate and longer term.

Professor Mark Gamsu from Leeds Beckett University gave feedback on the key themes for a draft paper titled “Health Inequalities – What more should the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Integrated Care System do?” The key recommendations in the paper are to develop a clear narrative on our approach to health inequalities and to embed the inequalities agenda within acute hospital trusts, with links into clinical services.  The network will take the recommendations further and plan to support a strategic approach to reducing health inequalities with the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT).

A first draft was shared of a “Health Inequalities Prevention Pathway” interactive resource that will bring together intelligence about groups of people disproportionately affected, with a structured approach to targeting preventative interventions. This resource will be developed through the Health Inequalities Networks and will incorporate learning from good practice from each place within West Yorkshire and Harrogate (Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield).

The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Prevention Network met last week, chaired by Emily Parry-Harries, Public Health Consultant for Kirklees Council. The network agreed to take forward three areas of work:

• Working with partners to understand and respond to the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on childhood trauma, the group discussed how ‘lockdown’ is an adverse childhood experience which must be considered
• Scoping with partners a public health approach/offer to support the opening of the Night Time Economy and the impact on population health and violent crime, with a view to implement prevention activities leading up to reopening.
• Support for the population living with long term conditions that have been shielding and the potential increase of long term conditions as a result of lockdown.  This work will be taken forward in partnership with our Personalised Care Programme. 

The Improving Population Health Programme has been working with the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Group Network, joining their recent meetings and providing feedback on national intelligence on the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on ethnic minority populations. The programme will continue to work with the BAME Network to develop a targeted approach to reducing inequalities for specific ethnic minority groups as we move into the next phase of the COVID-19 response. Work is now underway on the first phase of a co-production project designed to:

• Enable women their partners and their families to be part of the solution to accessible, safer and more responsive services, before, during and after pregnancy
• Work in partnership with women their partners and families to understand and respond to how they experience and how they would like to receive communications, support and care before, during and after pregnancy on a range of issues.

Our Partnership extends project with people with learning disabilities

We have extended our work with Bradford Talking Media (BTM). The project, which has been running since July 2019, has trained a group of more than 40 people with learning disabilities to act as a forum that advises the Partnership on how services can better relate to and address the needs of people with learning disabilities and / or autism. The Health and Care Champions project was set up in recognition that having a learning disability increases the likelihood of experiencing deprivation and poverty. Having a learning disability and / or autism can also limit the chances of people being able to work, both from the prospective employer believing lack of capability and low self-esteem of the people themselves. At the same time, people with autism and/or learning disabilities have much higher rates of ill-health than the general population, findings which have been borne out in relation to COVID-19 and reported last week by the Care Quality Commission.  You can read more here.

Funds to reduce the number of suicides across our area

Our Partnership has secured over £1.5 million pounds of funding from NHS England/NHS Improvement to reduce the numbers of suicide across the area over the next three years.

The funds will focus on two key areas:

• Prevention beyond secondary services, for example place-based community prevention work targeting middle-aged men, self-harm and primary care support
• Reduction within services via quality improvement for example self-harm care within acute hospitals and within mental health service.You can read more here.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Covid-19 Test, Trace and Isolate Programme

The third West Yorkshire and Harrogate Covid-19 Test, Trace and Isolate Programme meeting took place last Thursday. The programme includes colleagues from Public Health England, public health directors / colleagues from councils, NHS England, primary care and clinical commissioning groups.

The WY&H HCP SRO for the programme is Martin Barkley, CEO for Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. Martin is also the regional lead for the testing programme in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber.

One of the group’s aims is to share learning, mutual support and good practice to avoid unnecessary effort for West Yorkshire Directors of Public Health (DsPH). This is already happening. For example Leeds is one of eleven pilot / beacon sites and they have shared their local outbreak plan, which all councils are working on for the end of June.

There will be a regional Yorkshire and Humber oversight group, one of nine nationally. The group will be chaired by Sarah Norman, chief executive at Barnsley Council and Greg Fell, the Director of Public Health in Sheffield, who will be the lead DPH. Gregg is also the Vice-chair of the Association of Directors of Public Health, Yorkshire and the Humber. The oversight group will be the interface between the national and local response across Yorkshire and Humber.

The NHS Test and Trace service went live on May 28, in England, with 25,000 contact tracing staff and the capacity to trace the 10,000 contacts per day. As we move to the next stage of the coronavirus, we will be able to replace national lockdowns with individual isolation and, if necessary, local action where there are outbreaks. The new system will help to keep this virus under control while carefully and safely lifting the lockdown.

We do not currently know how long an antibody response to the virus lasts (if it has any impact at all), nor whether having antibodies means a person cannot transmit the virus to others. This is why it is important we test as many people as possible, starting with NHS staff so we can grow a fuller understanding of the virus as new scientific evidence emerges. It is also important that staff who have antibodies continue to follow PPE, hand washing and social distancing guidance.

Innovative Urgent and Emergency Care Nursing Associate Apprenticeship in Partnership with Huddersfield University

The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership (WY&H HCP) will embark on an Urgent and Emergency Care Nursing Associate Apprenticeship Partnership with Huddersfield University after the innovative idea secured major funding from Health Education England (HEE) in April 2020. This new course will help to expand and transform the health service workforce.

The University already delivers highly successful apprenticeship courses for the training of nursing associates. This new two-year nursing associate apprenticeship course will focus on the Urgent and Emergency care agenda.  This new nursing role will be a key member of the multidisciplinary health and care team under the supervision of registered nurses to deliver flexible care across a wide variety of settings.  The first cohort will be recruited by 14th December 2020, enabling a new course to be launched at the start of 2021.

• Meeting local need. With a recognised shortage of nursing staff across all settings some health and social care roles have not evolved as quickly as the landscape and there has been less focus on the foundation/entry level roles and how these could be utilised to assist in service provision across urgent and emergency care settings. 
• Course ambitions. This exciting new course will allow candidates to draw on the ethos ‘learning together, working together’;  as unique rotational work-based learning will span across health and social care settings across the wider Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) pathway including; Social Care, Emergency Departments, community-based UEC settings, primary and community care.
• Increased Integration. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the need to create greater Integration between health and social care. Such Initiatives can also help assist in creating a more sustainable workforce with good retention rates.

Local Employers Virtual Stakeholder Event; 29 June, 12 noon -2pm

On Monday 29th June, 12 noon -2pm we will be hosting a virtual event on ‘Microsoft Teams’ and encourage local health and care organisations to join us. We particularly hope some of our local CQC registered businesses, organisations or agencies providing any type of adult social care or care home providers might want to find out more about this exciting opportunity. For more information and registration details please visit here.

Volunteers Week 2020

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge called volunteers from two organisations that rely on their volunteer networks to help run and support their services: Conscious Youth which is based in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, and Machynlleth Community Corona Response in Powys, Wales.