Five Year Plan launched to improve wellbeing across West Yorkshire

WEST Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership (WY&H HCP), of which Bradford Teaching Hospitals is part, today published its latest Five Year Plan (10 March).

Titled ‘Better Health and Wellbeing for Everyone’, it sets out the Partnership’s ambition to improve the health, care and wellbeing of everyone living across the area.

The Partnership is building on four years of collective working. Its partners collectively oversee a health and care budget of £5.5 billion and serve 2.7 million people.

Since its inception, the Partnership has been working on health inequalities, unwarranted care variation and better use of resources between NHS and local authority commissioners.

Successes to date include developing an award-winning programme to support 260,000 carers; launching the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record to improve people’s care; setting up a new community eating disorder service; establishing a health and care champions network for people with learning disabilities; and securing the largest share of national capital investment totalling £883 million for 10 schemes, including building a new adult, and children’s hospital in Leeds, which will benefit the whole area.

The Partnership has also allocated nearly £2m to community organisations to help tackle loneliness and prevent ill health.

Better controlled

WY&H HCP has also established the first suicide bereavement service for West Yorkshire and Harrogate and increased the number of people (now nearly 8,000) who have their hypertension better controlled to safe limits, potentially preventing 65 deaths, 122 strokes and 82 heart attacks over the next five years.

Since April 2018, 1,500 people have been identified across our area as having atrial fibrillation (AF) with approximately 2,000 people receiving anti-coagulation drugs. As a result of this, it is estimated that 81 people with AF in West Yorkshire and Harrogate did not have a life-changing stroke because they received protective medicines.

Other examples include hospitals working together for the first 72 hours of critical stroke care, and a series of roadshows to showcase the work of Local Maternity Systems, speaking to more than 350 maternity colleagues across the area. WY&H HCP also worked with communities to develop the award winning ‘Looking out for our neighbours’ campaign, with 46,000 acts of kindness shared in the first six months.

The refreshed Plan builds on ‘Our Next Steps to Better Health and Care for Everyone’, published in February 2018. It details how the Partnership works in each of its six local places (Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale; Harrogate; Kirklees; Leeds; and Wakefield) and on agreed priority programmes.

These include cancer; urgent care; mental health; support for people with learning disabilities; maternity care; and children and young people.

Developed with partners, stakeholders and the public, it explains how the Partnership will both achieve the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan, which was published in January 2019, and local ambitions that go beyond the NHS into the things that support better health and wellbeing.

There are 10 big ambitions, including:

• Increasing the years of life that people live in good health, and reducing the gap in life expectancy by 5 per cent in our most deprived communities by 2024
• Reducing the gap in life expectancy for people with mental health, learning disabilities and autism by 10 per cent by 2024
• Reducing health inequalities for children living in households with the lowest incomes, including halting the trend in childhood obesity
• Increasing early diagnosis of cancer, ensuring at least 1,000 more people have the chance of curative treatment
• Reducing suicide by 10 per cent overall by 2020/21 and achieving a 75 per cent reduction in targeted areas by 2022
• Reducing anti-microbial resistance infections by 10 per cent by 2024, and antibiotic use by 15 per cent
• Reducing stillbirths, neonatal deaths, and brain injuries by 50 per cent, and maternal morbidity and mortality
• Becoming a global leader in responding to the climate emergency
• Strengthening local economic growth by reducing health inequalities and improving skills.

The Plan is closely linked with the Local Industrial Strategy. Good jobs drive good health.

To help achieve this, WY&H HCP partners are working alongside the West Yorkshire Combined Authority through the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership. Similarly, as good employers, investing £5.5bn together, the partners have a role in the economic health of the region and the wellbeing of the population. This requires good leadership at all levels and a different, more diverse set of leaders.

Another big ambition is to have more diverse leadership across the Partnership that accurately reflects the broad range of talent and one that is representative of our Black, Asian, minority and ethnic communities. By 2024 we will ensure that the leaders in the area reflect the communities they serve.

Rob Webster, West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership CEO Lead, said: “Our Partnership is a new way of working that joins up public services to ensure people have a chance to fulfil their potential and live well.

“Over the last four years, we have started to show that this way of working delivers improvements, even in tough times. This is down to the strength of our partnerships and the fact that we start in the communities we serve, with most work being done in our local places.

“We now need to keep going so we can deliver our Plan published today, which has been produced with partners, communities and stakeholders. It goes beyond the vital NHS services we deliver each day, into joined up mental, physical and social care and beyond. Housing, the economy, good jobs, education and the environment all have a role to play too.”

Collective ambitions

Councillor Tim Swift, Chairman of the Partnership Board and Leader of Calderdale Council, said: “This important Plan spells out our collective ambitions for the people of West Yorkshire and Harrogate. It remains true to our model of distributed leadership where the majority of work takes place in our six local places.

“We know that by working better together at every level and by listening to people, we can improve services, health and life chances. This is after all what we are all about. We look forward to certainty on public health grants, workforce and social care budgets in the near future, all of which are important factors in our future successes.”

Helen Hunter, CEO of Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale, added: “Healthwatch was involved in the development of the Five Year Plan, coordinating over 1,800 people’s voices in 2019 to help ensure the public’s views remained at the heart of the Plan, resulting in a vision that all organisations and individuals across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate area can recognise and buy into.

“The Plan is available in plain language and accessible formats and I’d encourage people to take a look and see how the Partnership works, now and in the future, and how they can influence their care experience.

“We only captured a snapshot of the views people hold about the NHS in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, and the key to delivering on the important ambitions of the Plan is making sure people and their voices continue to be heard and are at the centre of care and decision-making. Our role is to support and ensure this happens at every level.”