To ensure the five-year strategy and Joint Forward Plan are reflective of the current issues within our area and provide realistic objectives, we highly value the input from people living and working within West Yorkshire. Health inequalities are at the centre of our strategy and it is therefore important to build this from our local places. The challenges we face are significant, but as we have seen over recent years, working together on the right footprint on the right issues gives us the best opportunity to address them. We will therefore continue to involve people and communities as we develop our five-year strategy and both develop and deliver the Joint Forward Plan. You can read the involvement framework on our website. This also links to our 2022/23 communication and involvement plan. We will continue to build on what people have told us as set out in our engagement mapping reports.
Five-year strategy
Our places within West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership (Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield District) all have representatives as part of a design group which focused on the five-year strategy refresh. The group commissioned Healthwatch to produce an insight report in August 2022 to collect comments on the current ten big ambitions and people’s current issues and concerns. This included amongst other things, dentistry, access to care and the cost-of-living crisis. The report gathered local and West Yorkshire insight and has helped to identify any gaps for further engagement to target. They also reviewed the involvement and consultation mapping report of May 2022 and a further mapping report was produced in October. The insight report featured in the update paper on the strategy's development at the Partnership Board meeting on public on the 6 September. It was also discussed as part of the Partnership Board meeting in public on the 6 December.
As well as the insight report, further work supported this. This included desktop insight gathering from partners in the area (such as information on domestic abuse from councils, violence reduction, sexual exploitation, and housing for health). This report is on our website.
You can also read who has been involved in the development of the five-year strategy on our website
Joint Forward Plan
Following the development of the five-year strategy, the Joint Forward Plan will outline how the NHS elements of the strategy will be delivered. We will start with the insight gained from involvement on the five-year strategy.
There is a statutory duty to consult on the Joint Forward Plan and this would include:
- The group of people that we have responsibility for, and
- Any other people we consider appropriate to consult.
A draft of the plan will be shared with our Health and Wellbeing Boards, our Partnership Board and NHS England. The consultation needed isn’t what we’d normally think of as consultation i.e., for service transformation (it’s more in line with local authority policy consultations).
To engage with such a diverse range of communities and people, we will utilise a variety of methods to engage a large range of people via our local places. This might include:
- Surveys - An online survey will be used as the main way of gathering feedback. The survey will be disseminated in electronic format and be available on the ICB website with links from other partner websites. It will be made available in print and alternative formats on request. We will be asking people three questions to share their views on how we should deliver on our ambitions. This will be linked to our strategy to inform our Joint Forward Plan delivery. The closing date is Monday 20 February 2023.
- Focus / discussion groups - Online and face to face focus / discussion groups, as appropriate will be incorporated into the plan of activity. The discussions will focus on a question set linked to the delivery of our strategy as per survey.
- Involvement events and meetings - We will use various existing involvement events and meetings to seek views from people and communities as well as the VCSE and Healthwatch. This will include linking into West Yorkshire programmes, such as harnessing the power of communities, the race equality network and unpaid carers.
- Core narrative - We will produce a core narrative and answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) to support this work – the FAQs will be updated throughout.
- Website - We will publish information on our website, including a core narrative, frequently asked questions (FAQs), survey, impact assessments, record of engagement to date and other involvement opportunities.
- News bulletins – We will use our own and partner bulletins to share information and to seek staff, people and communities’ views.
- Social media - We will share details of the Joint Forward Plan consultation opportunity via our social media channels and encourage our followers to re-tweet and share content. Please see the assets attached.
- Equality and quality impact assessments – work is taking place with equality and quality experts to ensure all impacts are considered.
To ensure the methods above reach the target audience, we will utilise the following networks:
- Health and wellbeing boards, joint health overview scrutiny committee – We will share and discuss the Joint Forward Plan for their views
- Hospital trusts – Using local arrangements in place via engagement leads
- Staff - Separate discussions will be held with colleagues working in health and care services and staff networks.
- Local place public, patient panels – We will use existing local groups to ask their views, through engagement leads networks.
- GP practices / patients / primary care networks (PCNs) - We will ask GP practices / PCNs to use their own newsletters, websites, social media channels and patient groups to encourage participation. We will also share this information with members of local places’ Patient Reference Group Networks and offer to attend any meetings they may have during the consultation.
- Voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) - We will disseminate the survey and related information to the VCSE sector contacts using our dedicated databases and the Partnership’s Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme. We will encourage these organisations to share the survey widely through their own networks and offer to attend their meetings.
- West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Programmes - Utilise the mechanisms already set up and important to involvement such as the Unpaid Carers Programme, Children and Young People Programme and members of the Planned Care Citizen’s Panel.
- Healthwatch - Healthwatch have been commissioned for the insight report and all of their available contacts and mechanisms will be used to share information and gain insight in further involvement plans.
- Community asset-based approach - We will share with our Community Voice Champions in places where they exist and use alternative approaches where they do not.
- Partner and provider organisations - We will liaise with the wider West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership communication and engagement network to provide information, and request that they share it with people who access care and their public networks.
This involvement alongside the Healthwatch insight report and ICB further mapping has informed the five-year strategy development and consultation and will influence the draft Joint Forward Plan. Current thinking is that this will go to NHS England in February 2023 to then be agreed by West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and ICB Board in April 2023. This is the right process at the moment unless the guidance tells us otherwise and gives us other dates.
The consultation activity will start on the 10 January when the papers go live for the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board meeting on the 17 January. It will last for six weeks and close on Monday 20 February 2023.