We are in the process of refreshing our five-year strategy for the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership.

Our first five -year strategy was published in March 2020, a matter of days before the first COVID-19 ‘lockdown’.  This included our 10 big ambitions setting out what was important to us collectively and reflecting the fact that we are an equal partnership of NHS organisations, councils, hospices, Healthwatch communities and the voluntary community social enterprise sector.

As a result of the Health and Care Act 2022, we now have a set of statutory arrangements.  In these new arrangements, our Integrated Care Partnership (or Partnership Board as we call it) is responsible for overseeing the development of this refreshed strategy and making sure it reflects the needs of the 2.4 million people living across our area. 

As part of our new arrangements our NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, is responsible for the development of a joint forward plan that will deliver the NHS components of the strategy.  This Joint Forward Plan will also need to reflect the requirements set out in the refreshed NHS Long Term Plan (expected to be published shortly) and the Fuller stocktake

Our five place partnerships, bringing together the place based integrated care board teams, local authorities, the voluntary and community sector and providers will continue to lead most of this work – ensuring that population health and inequalities are placed front and centre. 

The five local place partnerships are:

Our strategy will continue to reflect the five local Health and Wellbeing Board strategies, and the Joint Forward Plan will be built from local places. 

We know from the conversations we have already had, that our big ambitions are still the right ones and that we should focus more on how we work together to deliver them. 

We also know that the pandemic, and its immediate aftermath have had a profound impact on people’s lives.  It has shone a light on the inequity that exists in the communities across West Yorkshire.  It has also led to unprecedented demand for services which has added to problems with accessing services that haven’t been seen for over 15 years. 

We would like to hear what is important to you. This will help us in developing a strategy and a joint forward plan, which will make a difference to your health and wellbeing and how you receive care.  We want to know what matters to you and how you think through our plans, that we can make a difference for you. We will be asking for people’s and communities views over the coming weeks and will update this webpage with more information shortly.

Plans and priorities

Strategy

  • West Yorkshire Integrated Care Strategy, owned by the Partnership Board (draft to be submitted NHS England and be discussed at the Partnership Board in December 2022, published in March 2023)
  • Built from local place-based Health and Wellbeing Strategies which are informed by Joint Strategic Needs Assessments.  A draft will be shared with each Health and Wellbeing Board in January and February 2023.

Delivery

  • West Yorkshire Joint Forward Plan owned by the Integrated Care Board to deliver the NHS parts of the strategy (draft submitted to NHS England, March 2023, published in April 2023)
  • Place Joint Forward Plan owned by the Place Committees of the Integrated Care Board.  A draft will be shared with local Place Committees in March 2023.
  • Both plans to be aligned to operational planning, better care fund, financial planning and winter planning.

Enablers

A set of enabling strategies to deliver the above are:  finance strategy, people strategy, digital strategy, equality, diversity and inclusion strategy and involvement framework.

Equality and quality impact assessments

We are continuing to work through our existing work on the equality and quality impact assessments for our strategies and plans across West Yorkshire. This will help us to ensure that our strategy will reduce inequalities in health for people and communities.  We will use this as a starting point for the development of our plans to deliver the West Yorkshire strategy. We will ensure our plans have impact assessments carried out.  Further details of this assessment will be published on our website here as the work evolves.
 

​​​​​​Five year plan discussed at Partnership Board on 6 September 2022

To receive an update on the approach to refreshing the Strategy; the outcomes of engagement and evidence gathering to date; and to note the development of an approach to an improvement and delivery framework to both enact the strategy and to monitor progress and outcomes through the creation of a joint forward plan. 

Refreshing the Partnership’s Five Year Strategy and developing an improvement approach to delivery (pdf)

Five year plan discussed at Partnership Board on 6 December 2022 and the Joint Forward Plan will be discussed at the Integrated Care Board in January 2023.

Read the draft five-year plan discussed at the Partnership Board on the 6 December. Please note this supports our work to further build the care experience into the way in which we work to deliver the strategy.

November 2022

Refreshing our five-year strategy

The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced new legislative measures that aim to make it easier for health and care organisations to deliver joined-up care for people.  As part of the new statutory arrangements, the Act describes how ‘Integrated Care Partnerships’ (ICPs, for West Yorkshire this is our Partnership Board) will bring together a wider range of partners, not just the NHS, to develop a strategy to address the broader health, public health, and social care needs of people and communities.

The West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership (our Integrated Care System), published ‘Better Health and Care for Everyone: Our Five Year Plan’ in March 2020, setting out how we work together to give everyone in West Yorkshire the very best start and every chance to live a long and healthy life.

Since its publication, the context and focus for our work has changed significantly.  Whilst we have made good progress across a range of areas in our strategy, the COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis has meant that our Partnership has needed to shift its focus away from our priorities to more immediate operational pressures. The scale of challenge has also increased in several areas, most notably the widening of health inequalities.

The refresh of our five-year strategy will be discussed at our Partnership Board on 6 December 2022. This will include sharing a draft with all Board members for their comments. The work has been developed by over 100 colleagues from across our local places (Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield District) and West Yorkshire Programmes, as well as wider partners.

Over the coming weeks we will be refining the strategy ready for it to published in the Spring. The delivery of how we will deliver our five-year strategy will be set out in our new Joint Forward Plan, publication expected April 2023.

We will continue to ask people for their views on the strategy and the plan over the coming months, alongside keeping people and communities updated on the work as it progresses.