Hello, our names are Beverley and James
As we come to the end of 2022 we wanted to reflect on the amazing work of colleagues throughout this year. This includes colleagues working in the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board Clinical and Professional Directorate where we work.
In particular we want to celebrate and share some of the progress that the teams in our directorate have made in the past year. Even before we became a statutory organisation in July 2022, we were working in collaboration across our five places (Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield District) to share learning, develop a system wide quality group and clinical forum. This involved clinical and care professional leadership across our Partnership for the benefit of people and communities.
Some of the great work taking place is covered in this blog – there are many to mention, but we hope the following gives you an idea.
Vaccinations
The West Yorkshire Vaccination Programme has delivered over 1.25 million COVID-19 vaccinations this year and colleagues are still going strong to help protect those at greatest risk this winter. At the heart of the programme is our focus on tackling health inequalities. We were one of the first in the North East and Yorkshire region to have reached all our care homes and have continued to develop our outreach services in local communities to make it as easy as possible for people to get their boosters.
COVID-19 Medicines Delivery Unit
Across England, the NHS set up new services last winter to assess patients at the highest risk from COVID and, where appropriate, offer them treatment, either with an antibody infusion or a course of antiviral tablets. These treatments aim to reduce their chance of needing hospital care. Colleagues set these important units up within two weeks’ notice – taking a collaborative and multi-agency approach to this work. Each local place worked with their acute hospital trusts to provide a service for their local population. The service still exists and is responding to the latest long COVID challenges. You can read about the positive difference the service made to people’s lives on our website.
Children and young people
The Children, Young People and Families programme has helped establish a West Yorkshire ‘complications from excess weight’ service to tackle childhood obesity which was recently recognised by the European Association for Study of Obesity as a ‘Collaborating Centre for Obesity Management’. The impact of this work means we are using innovation to address health inequalities, which aims to help reduce stigma around obesity and reduce inequality in oral health provision. The programme has also successfully launched the ‘Healthier Together’ website and is using google analytics to review access to the site and the impact on attendance in urgent and emergency care centres. The ‘Help, I am in crisis’ page has national and local resources available for local communities. There is also a key focus on communities worried about daily life with resources for housing and health, damp and mould and keeping your house warm. The impact of this work means we can influence the housing and health debate with the aim that this leads to improved outcomes for children and young people.
Maternity
The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) has been working with colleagues from Uganda maternity and neonatal services to share best practice and consider how knowledge and skills can be shared. Following discussions with clinicians and national leaders Uganda are setting up 16 LMNSs which will address clinical variation, share best practice and improve care for women and infants. Most Trusts across the LMNS have implemented the seven immediate and essential actions recommended by Ockenden and are now embedding that work. The anticipated Single Delivery Plan will be published in the new year and will include the vision set out in ‘Better Births’ and the learning from the Ockenden and East Kent recommendations in one plan to ensure that we are sighted on all of our improvement ambitions and the delivery of these.
Digital
Working with Thrive by Design (hosted organisation with Leeds and Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) we used an inclusive co-design approach to understanding the barriers to digital inclusion, working with people, various voluntary sector organisations who work with digitally excluded people and our digital inclusion leads from across our places within West Yorkshire. Our ‘Brain in Hand’ project aims to support people with learning disabilities and autism to be more independent in managing their mental health. Delivered by the personalised care learning disabilities teams, referrals are made for people to utilise this digital app through the Live Well Wakefield Social Prescribing Service, so when they struggle to remember things, need to make decisions or are anxious, the app supports them with 24-hour support.
Mental health, learning disabilities and / or autism
Earlier in the year we began a children and young people’s keyworker pilot for learning disability and autism across West Yorkshire. These keyworker roles are involved in all decisions about a young person’s care to support decision making, advocate on their behalf, and on the behalf of their family in all contexts and help ensure person centred care. As a result of extensive co-production with existing service users placed out of area, we have established the Community Rehabilitation Enhanced Support Team to move people using these out of area services from inpatient settings and develop new lives nearer to their homes in West Yorkshire. The team aims to empower people to define, build, and live meaningful, independent, and satisfying lives closer to their families and communities. In addition, we have reviewed the learning from recent high-profile cases to ensure our services are safe, high quality and patient centred. This will continue in the coming year.
Long term conditions and personalised care
Message in a Bottle was launched in June 2022; a joint project with Yorkshire Ambulance NHS Trust / Lions Clubs to provide an emergency / contingency plan for unpaid carers. This is all about supporting their cared for person in the event of information needed to enable the cared for person’s needs to continue to be met. Posters and films were created in seven different languages and the bottles and resources shared widely across West Yorkshire unpaid carer services for distribution.
Young Carer Films were launched in October 2022. This was a series of six films was co-produced with young carers sharing their lived experience of what it is like to be a young carer and the difference it made to them when professionals identified them as a young carer. The films were created for all professionals who work with children and young people to support them to identify, support and signpost young carers to local young carer services.
We have shared our work on personalised care workforce training regionally as a best practice example which has been evidenced to improve staff satisfaction and retention but also for supporting patients in achieving what matters to them. We have worked to ensure that our National Diabetes Prevention Programme is culturally competent and addresses inequalities. This is vital in the mission that is reducing variation and ensuring services are fit for purpose and personalised. For those people who need palliative and end of life care we have developed a strategy in an inclusive and collaborative way with training in supporting staff to develop better conversations for advanced care planning.
Antimicrobial-resistant infections (AMR)
A specific priority for West Yorkshire is to decrease the number of gram-negative bloodstream infections (GNBSIs); in particular, those caused by the bacteria E. coli. Bloodstream infections caused by drug-resistant E. coli have been associated with significantly increased mortality, yet a common source being a Urinary Tract Infections or UTI. In West Yorkshire, improvement projects are underway to enhance hydration awareness, good hygiene, early detection, and appropriate treatment. To supplement this work, we have produced a series of whiteboard animation films to educate about AMR and prevention of UTIs, and outline why staying hydrated is important in avoiding infections and support ourselves to keep antibiotics working.
Cancer
The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance has been working with all partners to help restore timely cancer diagnosis and treatment services following the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a combination of programmes looking to boost capacity and patient awareness, our partners have now recovered the number of referrals which would have been expected to be made had the pandemic not taken place. The level of treatment activity is almost entirely restored on the same measure. This is a vital contribution to ensuring that these services continue to be available, and accessible, as our local population needs them to be.
Looking back over the last year, given its challenges, we are proud of what we have achieved through our amazing teams working in partnership across West Yorkshire. We wish to extend our sincere thanks to everyone across the system who has worked with us to ensure that we improve outcomes for patients, address inequalities and work collectively in partnership with our places.
We would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas time. Thank you for your contribution and we look forward to working together in the New Year.
Beverley and James