Integrated Care Board meetings
Healthwatch and West Yorkshire Voice play a key part in feeding people’s voices into high level decision-making such as at the Integrated Care Board (ICB) Board meetings. These sessions take a ‘focus on’ areas such as access to primary care and mental health services. These sessions are made up of Board members, professionals, members of the public and community leaders.
The West Yorkshire Voice network and local Healthwatch listen to people and gather their experiences to help write a ‘briefing paper’ which is submitted to the board. We summarise the main issues for the people of West Yorkshire and make recommendations based on these.
People can post questions to the ICB in relation to items on the meeting agenda. These questions must be submitted 24 hours prior the meeting and will be answered at the start of the meeting. We are currently looking at ways that the process of asking questions can be made more accessible. Members of the public are invited to attend the meeting in person or watch the meeting as it is live streamed.
Here are the briefing papers we have written with input from West Yorkshire Voice members:
West Yorkshire Voice - non-emergency patient transport service feedback
This West Yorkshire Voice patient transport update explains how people's feedback has influenced and will continue to influence the delivery of the non-emergency patient transport service in West Yorkshire. It also gives guidance about what you can do if you’re not happy with a patient transport decision, and information about alternative options for getting to your hospital appointments.
In June 2025, Healthwatch across West Yorkshire published this WYICB 'focus on' report that reflects on the consistent themes emerging from these ‘focus on’ sessions which include:
What people have consistently told us across West Yorkshire during 2024-25
- the three Cs - ‘communication, co-ordination and compassion’
- access
- equity in access and experience – listening to people to make sure we get this right
- information, education and delivery of services with and within communities
- person-centred holistic care that meets the needs of all communities
- prevention and wellbeing
You can watch the report being presented and the discussion that followed by clicking on this link. It starts at 9.43 in the recording.
Amongst the discussion points were:
- How these themes can be built into the future West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board model as it changes in the coming year.
- How the themes can influence cultures, behaviours and values via workforce strategies and being built into things like leadership appraisals.
- Sharing around the experiences in Leeds of the benefits of building these recurring themes into major change programmes.
- Importance for local health and care providers to be thinking about and acting on these themes, not just the West Yorkshire system.
- How we can take forward these themes into the development of Integrated Neighbourhood Health Teams – a new way of providing joined up care closer to home.
The impact of housing on health
In June 2025, we had a group discussion with three people about how their recent housing issues have impacted on their health. People shared examples of how poor housing conditions such as damp, dust, rats and worries about safety have affected theirs and their children’s health. We worked with people to create a video about their experiences to help highlight the impact that poor housing conditions can have on someone's health. Thank you to Daria Vladimirova for editing the audio. Thank you also to Leeds Muslim Youth Forum and Foresight Equity and Solutions who helped connect us to people.
Where were these experiences shared?
This video was played at the West Yorkshire Partnership Board meeting on 15 July 2025. Rachael Loftus, who presented about housing and health at the board, told us about the importance and impact of having people’s voices brought into this meeting, she said,
“In setting out the case for partners to act jointly on health and housing, we really wanted to make sure decision makers could understand the impact of living in a home that is bad for your health - not just through statistics and data - but through stories. Our homes should be the cornerstone of leading a safe and healthy life, not somewhere that makes us sick, or where we can't recover properly or live well."
Thanks to the people who shared their stories, we were able to make the case that we cannot separate health from housing - and more work needs to be done to meet the scale of the challenges here in West Yorkshire.
At both meetings we got support from the Board members to continue with the projects and activities already underway. But more importantly, we got their support to look for further opportunities and funding to scale up activities, and to better target support to people who are becoming unwell because of their housing situation. This is an important first step, backed by the Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin and by the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership.
A carer's experience of antimicrobial resistance
In June 2025, we also worked with someone to share their experience of anti-microbial resistance from a carer’s perspective. They care full-time for their wife who has various health conditions, including recurring anti-microbial resistant urinary tract infections. They are passionate about raising awareness of this issue can have on people’s lives. They told us, “I hope that our story may help people to understand the human impact of antimicrobial resistance and thus to change behaviours.”
Where were these experiences shared?
Their video about caring for someone experiencing anti-microbial resistance was also played at the West Yorkshire Partnership Board meeting on 15 July 2025.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
West Yorkshire Voice was asked to lead several focus groups to help West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (WY ICB) develop its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy. West Yorkshire Voice invited people to share their feedback and ideas about what should be included in the new strategy for health and care services across the region.
The focus groups were planned alongside other surveys and events led by the WY ICB: a ‘Stakeholder Day’ and two online surveys, one for the public and one for professionals. West Yorkshire Voice spoke to 46 people about their understanding of equality, diversity and inclusion, what they thought was working well, what wasn’t and any suggestions they had for improvement.
- Accessible Communication: Clear communication adapted to people’s needs is vital to them having equal access and benefit from health and care services.
- Accessible, person centred and holistic care: It is important for people that professionals understand them as a ‘whole person’ rather than their symptoms or diagnosis.
- Design and adapting services in line with community need: There is often a disconnect between what professionals think people need and what they actually need.
- Diversity in workforce and leadership: People benefit from seeing and speaking to people like them in health and care services and would like to see diversity in leadership roles.
- Make services welcoming: People want to be able to go into a service without fear of judgement and feel safe.
- Compassionate and culturally competent care: It is important to people that services are culturally sensitive, and that staff understand their background and culture.
- Early Intervention and preventative care: Lack of early intervention can make things worse for people and exacerbate health inequalities.
- Creating a strategy and accountability: People want whatever is in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy to happen and for people to be accountable.
- Missing Voices: There were still many voices missing from the conversation around the EDI strategy and we need to hear from these to get the strategy right.
Please see this Equality, Diversity and Inclusion report for full details.
Neurodiversity summit (2023)
The West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership delivered ‘The West Yorkshire Neurodiversity Summit’ in December 2023. The event brought health and care professionals with partners from education, local councils, community groups, the voluntary sector, and people with lived experience from across West Yorkshire.
West Yorkshire Voice asked people who have lived experience and carers to share their views and ideas with us before the event. We have highlighted people’s experiences in this report Life on Hold.