The green shoots of spring

green shoots being plantedHello, my name is Brendan.

Early mornings are beginning to get lighter, and the green shoots of Spring are beginning to poke their heads out of their winter bunker. Sound familiar?

After one of the most challenging of winters in our history, there is an unfamiliar sense of optimism throughout the health and care system. Now when I say optimism, I use that word generously and in the context of the last few chaotic years of a global pandemic, and the world we find ourselves in currently. We’re still under all too familiar system pressures, remain in the midst of a global pandemic, and are grappling with what recovery from this will look like in each of our sectors. But – we have a collective eye to the future, and a sense of West Yorkshire purpose going forward.

The number of patients being treated for COVID in our hospitals continues to reduce week on week which leads to an increasing confidence about the future. It seems that we too can now cautiously poke our heads out and think about what lies ahead.

Brendan BrownNow ask any gardener and they’ll tell you that these delicate green shoots need the support of fertile ground to flourish. They also need a healthy root system which gives them the security and stability to grow.

That’s kind of how I see our West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership ‘People Plan’. It too is there to give you, the people behind our health and care services everything you need to grow and flourish and a deep root system that allows us to support, develop, recruit, and retain health and care colleagues across the area.

This plan is all about you, the people who power the diverse terrarium of organisations in the health and care sector, including the NHS, councils, care providers, hospices, Healthwatch, voluntary community and social enterprises (VCSE) and through the estimated 400,000 unpaid carers who are all part of our diverse, and valued workforce.

The new plan builds on fantastic progress we’ve made since the publication of ‘A healthy place to live, a great place to work’ back in 2018. This delivered the recruitment of nurse associates, 1400 apprenticeships, new mental health roles, and more than £1.5m funding for workforce development. Other achievements including working on a Health and Care Workforce Observatory in development with Yorkshire Universities as part of a support and recruitment package, and our approach to workforce planning.

Crucially this plan has been written and developed with the active involvement of colleagues from throughout the different health and care sectors, with their views at the heart of it. It’s a plan for us all, which seeks to embed the learning and good practice that has helped us through this challenging period, as well as setting out the longer-term ambitions for our people so they can continue to deliver quality care now and in the future for everyone.

Our common priority is to ensure we provide the fertile ground needed to look after, value and develop our colleagues, whilst we continue to strengthen, and grow the workforce of the future.

This means ensuring we have the right numbers of staff, good wellbeing support and specific training and supervision. It also means ensuring we have a diverse workforce reflective of the communities we serve.

Our updated People Plan sets out how we are going to do this, and I’d urge you all to take a bit of time to read it and understand our shared responsibility to make it a success. It’s built on the contribution of your colleagues, who we owe our collective thanks to for investing their time and energy in pulling it together.

Thanks for reading,
Brendan