Posted on: 14 December 2018
This week’s update is a Vlog from Rob Webster, CEO Lead for West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership. Rob reflects on progress made this year; the critical importance of staff, partners and communities - and how proud he is to work for our Partnership.
What’s been happening this week?
Funding
People across West Yorkshire and Harrogate will benefit from over £230million additional funding for three large schemes. The funding is part of the £963million of capital funding, announced by Matt Hancock, Health and Social Care Secretary, on Friday 7 December to boost health facilities across England. It is being allocated to a number of Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care Systems across England as part of a major investment in the long-term future of the NHS. The three West Yorkshire and Harrogate schemes approved are:
- Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust - £196million funding. The commitment is to fully fund the changes needed to improve and make sustainable hospital services while also delivering more care in the community and in our patient’s homes. This will require further work with local people, staff and partners and business case approval. Some £22million is being available in the current spending review period.
- Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT) - £27million to consolidate acute pathology services. Bringing pathology services together into a high quality new facility provides significant opportunities to improve staffing and skill-sharing as well as equipment efficiencies
- £12million in funding for mental health rehabilitation and recovery repatriation. This will support the provision of genuine alternatives to inpatient care for locked rehabilitation service users.
Our finance directors and other colleagues are working together regarding the next steps for other schemes put forward. You can read more about the funding here.
West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts Project
The project group met on Monday. The group includes clinical commissioning group leads, clinicians, commissioning managers and colleagues from the Academic Health Science Network, British Heart Foundation and Public Health England.
Our Partnership aims to reduce the impact of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) across our area by proactively identifying people at risk of having a heart attack or stroke, making sure they are optimally treated and have access to lifestyle advice and support. This work supports our Partnership’s ambition to reduce the number of people affected by CVD by 10 per cent by 2021. This would mean 1,100 fewer incidents, consisting of an estimated reduction of 350 strokes and 800 heart attacks.
The first phase of the project will focus on people at risk of CVD as a result of high blood pressure (hypertension) and will be based on the successful work already carried out in Bradford through its Healthy Hearts programme, and similar work by other of our places. Bradford’s award winning programme has helped to reduce hospital admissions for CVD by 10 per cent, prevented 74 strokes and 137 heart attacks. You can find out more by reading this case study.
We are developing a new website for the Partnership which will link to our clinical commissioning groups’ websites so people can find out more about local plans to improve their lives.
The group also discussed the proposed standardised hypertension protocol, which has been developed following engagement with clinicians from across the area. This includes identifying ways to target people who could benefit.
At least half of all heart attacks and strokes are caused by high blood pressure and it is a major risk factor for chronic kidney disease and cognitive decline. Having high blood pressure can triple the risk of stroke and heart disease and is a contributing factor in around half of strokes. Treatment is very effective - every 10mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke by 20%.
Working to make our meetings inclusive for people with learning disabilities
CHANGE is an established human rights organisation with a 23 year track record of empowering and supporting people with learning disabilities to claim their rightful place in society as equal citizens.
They raise awareness so that people from the learning disability community can understand and make independent decisions about their health, housing and employment needs.
There was a workshop on Thursday with West Yorkshire and Harrogate programme leads and other colleagues to look at how we can further involve people with learning disabilities in our work. Two co-trainers from CHANGE, one with a learning disability and one without a learning disability, co-facilitated the session to raise awareness of the health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities. This will help us to work together to find positive solutions and ways forward to reduce health inequalities.
Vice Chair for the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Board
Angela Schofield, Chair of Harrogate District NHS Foundation Trust, will be the Vice Chair for our new Partnership Board which meets the first time in public in June 2019.
It was announced in November that Cllr Tim Swift, Leader of Calderdale Council will be Chair of the Board.
Angela is an experienced chair, non-executive director and senior NHS manager and will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Partnership Board role. We are delighted that she has agreed to take the role on and look forward to working more closely with her over the next two years. You can find out more the Partnership Board here.
There will also be a recruitment process for co-opted public voice representatives on the Partnership Board early 2019. The role of the representative will be a critical friend with lived experience of health care services. Full details of the role and how to apply will be advertised soon.
Harnessing the Power of Communities
The Harnessing the Power of Communities (HPoC) steering group met on Monday. The meeting is chaired by Dr Soo Nevison, Chief Officer of Community Action Bradford and District and included representatives from voluntary / community partners including Healthwatch (Wakefield), Voluntary Action Calderdale and Community First Yorkshire (Harrogate). A number of key programme priorities were discussed. Including
- Sign-off for the VCS2020 strategy – this will be available on our website soon
- Sign-off for the programme’s terms of reference
- Progress updates, including mental health peer support, loneliness funds and our plans.
To ensure our work adds best value where possible and supports existing projects across the area, a number of conversations with different work streams have taken place. This includes maternity, mental health and cancer. The aim is to have more VCS representation on programmes. The next meeting of HPoC will take place January 2019.
Local place based planners (Bradford and District; Craven; Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield)
Colleagues from across the area met on Monday to share good practice taking place across our area. Ian Holmes, our Partnership Director, chaired the meeting. There was an update on the funding announcement (please see above). Colleagues were keen to look at learning from elsewhere (nationally) around joined up services and primary care following the funding announcement.
Ian gave an update on the System Overview Assurance Group (SOAG) meeting in November, where delayed transfer of care (people leaving hospital to return home), winter pressures and operational planning were discussed. Local areas plans will be discussed at the next meeting of SOAG on Monday so learning can be shared.
Ian also explained that Chris Ham from the Kings Fund is attending a future leadership meeting on 8 January to talk about national support to partnerships like ours.
There was an update from Kirklees on frailty programmes and personalised care in terms of a system wide approach. Areas such as these are discussed at the Kirklees planning working group for health and social care. Leeds has been considering projects that can go faster through further joined up work and additional funding – all of which links to their local plan. Wakefield partners / colleagues discussed their commissioning planning phase for 2019/20. Wakefield Health Wellbeing Board (HWB) drives forward this work. This is a big part of their local plan. Professor Sean Duffy, Clinical Lead for the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance is attending the next Wakefield HWB meeting in January to discuss cancer.
Local Maternity System Continuity of Carer Forum
This week saw the first meeting of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Continuity of Carer Forum.
Independent midwives and midwives from all our West Yorkshire and Harrogate provider trusts came together to share the models of continuity of carer that they are developing.
One of the recommendations of the national maternity review, Better Births, is that every woman should have a midwife, who is part of a small team of 4 to 8 midwives, based in the community who knows them and their family, and can provide continuity throughout the pregnancy, birth and once baby is born. Most women currently receive continuity of carer from their named midwife during pregnancy and when they take their baby (ies) home. The new models will also mean a member of the team being present at the birth.
Evidence from a systematic review (Sandal et al 2016) tells us that women who have a known midwife at the birth of their baby reported high ratings of maternal satisfaction and control. Women who received models of midwife led care were less likely to experience pre-term birth, less likely to require epidural anaesthesia and more likely to have a spontaneous vaginal birth. Over 2019 small scale models of continuity of carer will start to be introduced across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate LMS and evaluated to determine their impact.
What’s happening next week?
- The West Yorkshire and Harrogate System Oversight and Assurance Group (SOAG) meet on Monday. This is chaired by Rob Webster, our Partnership CEO lead.
- Finance directors from across the area meet on Wednesday.
- A meeting to discuss a public health shared framework for the area will take place on Friday.
What’s coming up?
- The Joint Committee of Clinical Commissioning Groups meets in pubic on Tuesday 8 January.
- The next meeting of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Communication and Engagement Network will take place on 17 January 2019.
- West Yorkshire and Harrogate will be hosting a personalised care workshop on Monday 25 February 2019. Invites will be sent out soon.
Recruitment
- Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust are recruiting to a Head of IT post. You can find out more here.
- Your help please…
- The University of Leeds is asking if anyone can help their Chronic Illness and Disability Project which offers first year medical students the chance to learn from patients and their carers. They would like volunteers who are able to talk to the students about their experience of illness or disability, or that of someone they care for. The course has worked for several years with community groups who provide volunteers. In return they would offer a small donation to Yorkshire Cancer Community. Each volunteer is paired with two first year medical students who would make a single visit in February or March 2019. Usually volunteers arrange to meet the students in their own home. This must be within 60 minutes travel of Leeds city centre by public transport. Meetings would take about an hour and could cover:
- How you manage your illness or disability, or that of someone you care for
- What you think about your illness or disability
- how things have changed since the diagnosis
For more information please contact David Hemming on 0113 343 4179 or email iandpY1@leeds.ac.uk before 17 December.
Funding
- The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have just launched an 'Innovation in Democracy' programme to support citizens' panels. Funding will go to local authorities.
For information
- West Yorkshire and Harrogate Care Partnership has launched a three-year recruitment drive to bring 110 international GPs to the local area. The project is being funded by NHS England, following a successful bid for funds by the Partnership. Medics from countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece are being targeted, as well as those from outside Europe, beginning with Australia and New Zealand. Qualified overseas medics already in the UK but not currently practicing are also eligible to apply. Find out more about international recruitment here.
- Professor Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer for England, has announced that the NHS England Perceptions of Nursing programme is being re-named to ‘Nursing Now England’. This key piece of work is being aligned with the global ‘Nursing Now’ campaign, which also aims to raise the status and profile of nursing. The Perceptions of Midwifery programme will continue under the same name in order to give this important workforce its own separate focus. An event was held on Monday to launch the campaign and discuss what the future holds for Nursing Now England.
- Yorkshire Cancer Patient Forum is changing its name to Yorkshire Cancer Communities - the voice of those affected by cancer in Yorkshire and the Humber. Until colleagues have completed the re-brand, their publicity materials and website will still show the name of Yorkshire Cancer Patient Forum.
- £10.5 million Public Health England funding awarded to local projects to support adults and children impacted by alcohol. Find out more about the funding awards here.
Campaigns
- The Leeds Big Thank You: The search has begun for Leeds unsung heroes who go the extra mile to help others during winter. Click here to make a nomination for your winter health hero.
- Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust (YAS) has launched its Think Before You Call campaign to raise awareness of the correct use of the emergency ambulance service and reduce the number of inappropriate calls at its busiest time of the year. A series of hard-hitting messages and videos have been produced to highlight how inappropriate calls mean that staff in the Emergency Operations Centre and ambulance crews out on the road may not be available for people who genuinely need their help. It is expected that YAS will deal with over 65,000 calls in the three-week festive period from 17 December. All 999 calls are categorised to determine the speed and type of response a patient will receive. The most seriously- ill patients will be taken to hospital by land or air ambulance. Ambulances can be diverted to patients where there is a more urgent clinical need or risk to life, but not once they have arrived on scene with their patient. Around 30% of patients will not need to be taken to hospital. Instead they will be given advice over the phone or signposted to an alternative and more appropriate healthcare service. The campaign videos and posters will be supported by social media messages about when to call 999, what alternative NHS services are available for those with less serious injuries and illnesses as well as pressure-related information when we are at our busiest. The videos can be viewed here.
- GP access: national advertising campaign. A national marketing campaign promoting the availability of evening and weekend appointments launched on Monday 3 December 2018 and will run for 3 weeks. The target audience for the campaign is all members of the public, over the age of 16, prioritising those groups that find it harder to access GP appointments during normal appointment times such as working adults aged 20 to 40 years of age and those who are self-employed. The campaign focuses on use of national radio and press as well as digital and social media ‘paid for’ advertising channels and will use the ‘Help Us Help You’ unifying brand which will run across all winter campaigns this year. An example of the artwork to be used in the campaign is included here and full media plan attached for information. Posters and other marketing materials are available on the Public Health England campaign resource centre. Contact louise.
harvey6 for further details.@nhs.net
- At the beginning of March 2019 Public Health England will launch a new national campaign to help increase participation in the National Cervical Screening Programme. Cervical screening is estimated to save 5,000 lives a year and yet coverage is at a 20 year low. The campaign will highlight the risks of cervical cancer and preventative benefits of screening, encouraging women of all ages to respond to their letter and if they have missed previous invites, to book a screening appointment. Further information will follow shortly and you can sign up for updates on the PHE Campaign Resource Centre.
Training
- The latest Participation and System Transformation webinar schedule from December 18 up to March 19 is here. This includes details of NHS E forthcoming webinars along with registration links.
- Free LGBT History Month training for health care professionals from Yorkshire Mesmac in Wakefield throughout February (1 to 2 hrs). For more information or to book a session email m.
tyson @mesmac.co.uk
Reports
- Responding to a report by The King’s Fund and the University of York on home care services, Cllr Ian Hudspeth, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, responds to The King's Fund report on home care services.
- The Kings Fund: Care is provided at home each year to more than 350,000 older people and 76,300 young people with disabilities. Commissioning and delivering the highest quality home care should be a significant objective of our health and social care system. Views of providers and commissioners are in a report you can access here.
- NHS Research (NHIR): New integrated care models can increase patient satisfaction, perceived quality of care and improve access to services. Strong leadership and patient engagement are among factors influencing successful implementation. The review finds some positives, but overall highlights the complexity of implementing and assessing new models of care. You can find out more here.
- Help at Home - Use of assistive technology for older people. This new document has been produced by NHS National Institute for Health Research. You can read it here.
In the news…
West Yorkshire & Harrogate
- Rob Webster and Julian Hartley both feature on the Health Service Journal (HSJ)’s HSJ 100 list which was released on Thursday. Rob is the Chief Executive of South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and also our Partnership CEO Lead. Julian is the chief executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Chair of West Yorkshire and Harrogate Association of Acute Trusts (hospitals working together) and a core member of the Partnership leadership team.
- Andy Sixsmith is a GP in West Yorkshire and is involved in workforce development through NHS England and the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership (WYHP). In this short episode Andy about his recent decision to join a practice in the Modality super-partnership. In terms of workforce development he talks about the challenges currently being faced and the plan put in place by our Partnership (including the formation of four Primary Care Training Hubs) and about the early impact that this new approach is having.
Other news
- HSJ: The new NHS England and NHS Improvement top team revealed.
- HSJ: The Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed the trusts and partnerships which will receive capital funding worth around £900m for building developments. In total, 75 schemes (see below) across the country will receive £963m in this tranche of government capital spending. It is part of an overall £3.5bn pot which was announced in its 2017 autumn budget. Almost £800m will go to regions outside London.
- Telegraph: Mental health crises to be treated within four hours in new NHS target.
- Yorkshire Post: Chronic under-funding of adult social care in the North is sparking a workforce crisis, the Government was warned this week.
- Sunday Telegraph: Ministers urged to avoid too high care cost cap. With the Government expected to publish a green paper on social care before Christmas, ministers have been urged not to set a cap on care costs which is so high that it fails to help almost all of those in need.
- Independent: The number of teenagers receiving help to deal with anxiety from Childline has almost doubled in two years. Read more here.
- Pharma News: The NHS has been taking an increasingly joined-up approach to care during 2018, significantly altering how it works with pharma. “There are now 14 designated ICS areas in England following an announcement in the spring that a further four STP regions would make the transition – namely Gloucestershire, West Yorkshire and Harrogate, Suffolk, and North East Essex and North Cumbria. These high-performing areas, which have taken on broad learnings from NHS vanguards, are leading the way on whole population contracts”. WY&H mentioned. Read here.
- BBC news: Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust capital funding announcement.
- Daily Mail: The UK now has one of the slowest improving life expectancies in the developed world, second only to the US, according to an official report. You can read it here.
- Guardian: In a letter to the Guardian, a group of 30 senior public health experts from the North of England argue that cuts to public health grants need to be reversed to tackle “substantial and growing health inequalities”. They say that premature death rates are 20% higher for people living in the North than in the South. There is also an argument that the health inequality is “not only morally wrong but economically irresponsible”, with the Northern Health Science Alliance’s recent Health for Wealth report showing that it costs the UK £13.2bn a year in lost productivity.
- HSJ: The supply of district nurses coming into the NHS could drop to zero in 2021. Health Education England’s national funding for the one-year postgraduate course is due to finish in 2019-20, with the government planning for the apprenticeship levy to provide funding for a part-time two-year course from 2020-21.