The difference our Partnership is making

South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust talks about their social responsibility and sustainability initiatives

Project Hope is an exciting initiative designed specifically to give 16-25yr old care experienced young people from West Yorkshire hope for a better future.

A new tobacco dependency service, which went live for acute inpatients at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust in September 2023, is helping patients on their journey to quit smoking and chewing tobacco. Tobacco Dependency Adviser, Sruthi Nair, tells us more.

Around one in ten young people has asthma in the UK and a child is admitted to hospital every 20 minutes because of an asthma attack, the majority of which are preventable.

The national HSJ Digital Awards 2023 are a special occasion to celebrate excellence in digitising, connecting, and transforming health and care and the website was a finalist at an award ceremony held in Manchester on 22 June.

The Fellowship is West Yorkshire’s award-winning leadership development programme aimed specifically at colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds who are working within health and care. It was designed to help achieve our 10 big ambitions as a Partnership, as set out in our People Plan.

West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership’s Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) prevention programme delivered a successful campaign for know your numbers week. Know your numbers is a national campaign led by Blood Pressure UK, to increase awareness of the importance of blood pressure checking, monitoring and understanding what the numbers mean.

A trailblazing suicide prevention project – believed to be one of the first of its kind in the country – has delivered potentially life-saving work with Gypsy and Traveller communities across West Yorkshire.

Zoe, Early Intervention Midwife at Airedale General Hospital, tells us about the work being carried out by Airedale NHS Foundation Trust to reduce smoking in pregnancy

A patient from Hebden Bridge contacted their Care Coordinator with concerns that they hadn’t received their bowel cancer screening kit, even though the patient’s spouse had received theirs. This Case Study follows a personalised care approach, with good communication with the patient to ensure the issue was actioned and resolved.

Ella Fairbrother PGPA Social Prescribing and Care Coordination Lead: Lower Calder Valley PCN Personalised Care Institute Ambassador

Pregnancy can feel a lot to deal with. You want to stop smoking, and you can – but you may need some help, it’s not easy. We hear from two young mums-to-be who were supported by their maternity health adviser to quit smoking.

The scheme, provides opportunities for learning and development sessions, mentorship and coaching. A celebration event was held with the first fellows to graduate from the two-year programme.

Libby Holroyd, a Clinical Nurse Specialist for Children’s Asthma at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, has recently been nominated for an award for her innovative work in reducing emergency admissions for children with severe asthma.

West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership are sharing stories from across our five places, Bradford District and Craven, Wakefield, Kirklees, Calderdale and Leeds about the work that our Learning Disabilities Challenge teams are doing.

People who have been suicidal or bereaved by suicide share their insight and thoughts on good practice within mental health services.

In West Yorkshire we have higher numbers of adults with a learning disability receiving long-term support from Local Authorities compared to the rest of England. Recognising this inequality, our ambition is that people with learning disabilities will experience the best possible health care and have improved outcomes from their local health services.

A staff member experiencing thoughts of suicide has praised the Partnership’s suicide prevention resources.

For the second year we ran an area wide ‘Together We Can’ winter campaign. This a long-term education and awareness campaign to alter public behaviour to minimise pressures on urgent and emergency services. Read highlights and the full evaluation report here.

Mick Lambert, a registered learning disability nurse and mental health practitioner working with West Yorkshire Liaison and Diversion Service, helps to support those in the criminal justice system with a view to diverting away from custodial sentences and identifying rehabilitative support as an alternative.

The Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub supported induction sessions for members of the West Yorkshire Community Mental Health Transformation (CMHT) workforce and the larger West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership.

Leading Mental Wellbeing, funded by the Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub, highlighted the ‘the important role that leaders can play in creating a mental wellbeing culture in the workplace’ according to a recent participant.

We know that financial hardship affects people’s mental and physical wellbeing so we’ve been working closely with our partners to get those most affected by this crisis, the support they urgently need.

Thanks to vital funding from the staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub, The Cellar Trust has been hosting a series of webinars to promote mental health and wellbeing.

One of our Partnership’s 10 Big Ambitions is to reduce the gap in life expectancy for autistic and other neurodiverse people, people with learning disabilities and people with mental health conditions by 10% by 2024.

Like COVID Medicines Delivery Units (CMDUs) across West Yorkshire, the CMDU service at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust is treating patients at highest risk of becoming seriously ill with the COVID-19 virus.

Patients with type 1 diabetes will be eligible for life-changing continuous glucose monitors after the health service negotiated and secured funding for this innovative technology.

Primary care networks in the Wakefield area worked with colleagues across the voluntary and statutory sectors to improve engagement with people registered with a learning disability by understanding the challenges and barriers they face when accessing primary care services.

In June 2022 the Partnership launched a new website that provides consistent, accurate and trustworthy healthcare advice to parents, carers, young people and professionals.

Winter 2021/22 was a timely opportunity to work together across West Yorkshire and roll out the first collective winter communications campaign called ‘Together We Can’.

Reaching offline audiences with information about how GP practices continued to see patients was a way to help people access the right service for their needs.

Carers Week is an annual campaign to raise awareness of caring, highlighting the challenges unpaid carers face and recognising the valuable contribution they make to families and communities.

To mark Carers Week, the Partnership and Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust teamed up to raise vital awareness of the ‘Message in a Bottle’ initiative to unpaid carers.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service's community engagement team provides training on life-saving skills and helps people understand how and when to use their services.

Calderdale Cares Partnership requested assistance from Voluntary Action Calderdale and the community and voluntary sector to communicate important winter messages to target groups during the winter of 2021/22.

Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership created a handy booklet called ‘If your child is poorly’ developed with the input of specialist paediatric clinicians to support local families.

A Working Carer’s Passport is a record that can be printed or stored electronically. It identifies the carer and sets out an offer of support, services or other benefits.

In West Yorkshire and Harrogate, around 3,000 people a year have a stroke with two thirds of stroke survivors left with some form of physical, mental or emotional disability – often completely life changing.

Thousands of people living with diabetes across West Yorkshire are using pioneering new technology available via the NHS to test for chronic kidney disease at home.

The Partnership’s Children, Young People (CYP) and Families Programme is working with the West Yorkshire wide CYP Epilepsy Group to improve the care journey of children and young people with epilepsy.

The Partnership’s Personalised Care Programme secured funding from NHS England to deliver an online training programme with follow-up support for its health and care workforce, volunteers and link workers.

As we celebrate International Day of the Midwife 2022, we take a look back at last year’s event. We wanted to give #IDM2021 the recognition it deserved, and raise the profile of the great work undertaken each and every day by the maternity workforce.

The NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme is helping people who are at high risk of type 2 diabetes to make lasting lifestyle changes. Follow John on his weight loss journey, from his initial thoughts about embarking on the programme, to his reflections on the last session.

Our Planned Care Citizens’ Panel was introduced in partnership with Healthwatch to support communications around delays to planned care due to the pandemic.

Spirometry is a simple test used to help diagnose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the name for a group of lung conditions that cause breathing difficulties, including emphysema and bronchitis.

The Partnership’s Diabetes Programme ran training session in March and April 2022 to support busy GPs with referrals to the NHS Low Calorie Diet Programme.

Marie is one of the 2,000+ clinically vulnerable people across West Yorkshire who have been assessed for the new treatments since mid-December 2021. 

TytoCare Ltd. has developed a hand-held device and app that connects with a patient’s clinician for an on-demand assessment, diagnosis, and prescription if needed, anytime, anywhere.

The Partnership is committed to helping young carers and supports campaigns like Young Carers Action Day to raise awareness of young carers and the services available across West Yorkshire.

A new blood test that can predict the chance of a patient having cancer is being evaluated by the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance.

The Healthy Hearts project is aiming to reduce the number of people across West Yorkshire who are affected by cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Our Suicide Prevention Strategy is aiming to make suicide prevention everyone's business, because every death by suicide is one death too many.

Paul Woodward, one of the longest surviving transplant patients in the country, is also one of the first people in West Yorkshire to benefit from a new COVID treatment

This group provides a consultation platform with a regular group of volunteerss, allowing them to use their local knowledge to comment on and influence new violence reduction unit interventions, and ensure any proposals best suit what our communities want.

We invited colleagues and citizens to a series of twelve climate change workshops to help us understand exactly what changes and investments are needed.

In October 2021 we took the opportunity to celebrate the rich diversity of our people by hosting a week-long celebration of our communities. The event showcased work taking place across the area to connect on inclusion, celebrate diversity within the workforce and learn from others.

Our Partnership were proud to work with The Violence Reduction Unit and over 580 organisations and community allies by launching a movement which highlights our commitment to anti-racism in all its forms.

In October 2021 we hosted our latest community resilience event, the fourth in our ‘Stronger, healthier, better together’ series, giving colleagues from the VCSE sector the opportunity to ask questions directly to a panel of health and care partners.

The NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme is a free, 9-month behaviour change programme for those at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Statistics show that more men die by suicide than women and that middle aged men are particularly at risk. We worked with men with lived experience to create the Great Minds Project. It increased awareness of the risk factors and warning signs of male suicide.

Our ambition to make an outstanding contribution to healthcare in what has been an exceptional and challenging period across the sector has been recognised.

Our Local Maternity System is a partnership of maternity and neonatal service providers, commissioners, local authorities and maternity voices partnerships working together to transform local maternity services.

Diabetes Week is an annual campaign organised by the charity Diabetes UK. In 2021, the Partnership's Elise Featherstone told her story for the campaign's #DiabetesStories series.

After the success of the Digital Health Hub launched in 2019, in partnership with 100% Digital Leeds Cross Gates and District Good Neighbours Scheme we secured funding to continue their work.

Solace was one of seven organisations funded through the Partnership’s health inequalities funds. They support asylum seekers and refugees across the area, including in Kirklees and Leeds.