In 2018 the government announced that the NHS budget would be increased by £20 billion a year. In January 2019, the NHS in England published a Long Term Plan for spending this extra money, covering everything from making care better to investing more money in technology and helping more people stay well.
All Partnerships like ours (also known as integrated care systems and sustainability transformation partnerships) have developed a Five Year Plan. Our Plan sets out how we will achieve the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan for the 2.7million people living across West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
Alongside our current priority programmes, which include cancer, urgent care, mental health, and maternity, our Plan will include a stronger focus on supporting carers and preventing ill health. It will also set out how we intend to support children and families more, whilst tackling health inequalities and improving the lives of the poorest, the fastest. This will ensure our existing work aligns fully to the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan and that of our Partnership Board.
Our draft Plan builds on local plans that have been developed in each of the six local areas we cover. Each of these local plans will be of a particular interest to you and contacts. This is where the majority of the work takes place. You can access these plans on your local council websites under the Health and Wellbeing Board section. We have supplemented these plans with agreed work that can best take place at a West Yorkshire and Harrogate level.
This keeps us focused on an important principle of our Partnership – we deal with issues as locally as possible.
It’s important to note that first and foremost this is a West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Plan developed together and which belongs to us all. We published the draft plan on the 27 August ahead of our Partnership Board meeting on the 3 September 2019 to give people the opportunity to share their views further. We also shared a revised version of the Plan and the public summary with the Partnership Board on the 3 December; you can read the papers here.
We are clear that our Plan should respond to the needs of all people living across the area. With this in mind, our Plan has been produced with partners and stakeholders and this is reflected throughout.
With this firmly in view, our Five Year Plan will describe how the health and social care workforce of over 100,000 in West Yorkshire and Harrogate is changing to meet the current and future needs of people living across the area. The approach we are taking is in line with the ‘Interim NHS People Plan’ and also our own workforce plan ‘A healthy place to live, a great place to work’.
To further support this important work we have set up a new West Yorkshire and Harrogate People Board. They will continue the excellent work we have developed on apprenticeships, staff passports, international recruitment and recruitment and retention of more staff. They will also ensure we can deliver the NHS people plan, plus improvements across the workforce of all partners. This is included in our Five Year Plan.
We eagerly await the Government’s workforce, public health, and social care financial settlements for the next five years and know this will continue to be a point of debate nationally. Our full plan will not be delivered without public health, social care and workforce support.
It’s important to note that our ambitions stretch far beyond health services. We have a strong relationship with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority that is working through the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership to develop the Local Industrial Strategy. This is a long-term, evidence-based plan to strengthen local economic growth, reduce health inequalities and improve skills, productivity and the earning power of people living in West Yorkshire and Harrogate. This firmly aligns to the Partnership’s ambitions and these cannot be seen in isolation from each other.
Our Plan also recognises the huge contribution community organisations and volunteers make; and the vital role of the 260,000 unpaid carers who care for family and friends day in, day out and whose numbers are more than that of our paid workforce.