Posted on: 12 August 2022
Hello, my name is Ian and I’m the Director of Strategy and Partnerships for NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board. I wanted to use this blog to talk about the work that we are doing over the coming months to refresh our Partnership’s Five-Year Plan and develop our Joint Forward Plan to deliver it.
Our first five -year plan 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, local authorities, hospices, Healthwatch communities and the voluntary community social enterprise sector.
Our first three ambitions all relate to narrowing health inequalities across West Yorkshire – for the 10% of people who live in our poorest areas, for people with serious mental illness, learning disabilities and autism, and for children living in poverty. The next four ambitions all deal with improving access to and quality of services, including for example earlier diagnosis of cancers so that they can be cured, and safe and high-quality maternity services.
The final three ambitions all relate to our contribution to wider social and economic goals for our region, including improving the diversity of our leadership so that we are reflective of the communities we serve; contributing to the response to the climate emergency; and ensuring that the £5bn of healthcare investment in West Yorkshire is used to support inclusive economic growth.
Now that we are in the new statutory 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.
The 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.
We have started conversations across the breadth of our Partnership about the approach we should take to this refresh. By far the strongest message we have heard to date is that these big ambitions are still the right ones – and our focus should be on how we use the new statutory arrangements to work together to deliver them. So, the theme of continuity of focus and ambition will be central.
But we also know that the situation that the health and care system is operating in has changed significantly over the past two years. 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.
More recently, the cost-of-living increases, driven by fuel and food prices is increasing the number of people in poverty. This will have a direct impact on people’s ability to access services, and their health and wellbeing. We also recognise the impact that this will have on our workforce, and we need to support them in the best way that we can (you can find out more by reading Kate Sims, Director for People for the ICB leadership message next week).
The Healthwatch organisations in West Yorkshire have provided insight into people and communities concerns and priorities for health services in this context, for example:
- People are understandably concerned with access to planned care and general practice services, but they have also identified the importance of good communication for people who are waiting as well as understanding the alternatives available.
- Digital technology has created greater choices for how people access services, but there is concern that this can lead to greater exclusion from care which can widen inequalities.
- People are increasingly concerned about pressure on staff, and workforce shortages across the health and care system, with social care staffing pressures of particular concern.
- People want physical and mental health and care services to be jointed up – and have commented specifically on the need for better hospital discharge processes and more effective planning for moving from hospital to home and care in the community.
Our new strategy will therefore build on the ambitions we have to date but also reflect this reality. These challenges are significant, but as we have seen over recent years, collaboration between the right partners, on the right footprint on the right issues gives us the best opportunity to address them. We also know that whilst the pandemic brought us many challenges, we developed new ways of working and innovated in response to it. It’s important to learn from this and embed the best of this into our strategy and joint forward plan. 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. Our strategy will continue to reflect the five local Health and Wellbeing Board strategies, and the Joint Forward Plan will be built from place. Our provider collaboratives will work at scale where there is a clear case to do so – for example WYAAT (the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts) will continue to oversee our elective recovery work, having reduced the number of two year waits for a planned procedure by over 90% in the first four months of this financial year. At a West Yorkshire level, we will continue to work with partners such as the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and West Yorkshire police on common goals, such as joint work on the climate change agenda, employment and skills, and violence reduction. Our aim is to develop our strategy and joint forward plan over the autumn and winter, in preparation for the 2023-24 financial year. If you or your organisation would like to have your say as part of this work, please do just get in touch. More information will be on our website very soon.
Have a good weekend,
Ian