A thank you message from Cathy Elliott, Chair of NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and Deputy Chair of the Integrated Care Partnership - West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Board
Thank you for your attendance of the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) session on Tuesday 21 March in Wakefield. The voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector (VCSE) lunchtime engagement session with ICB Board members that day was really welcomed. It provided an opportunity for an open discussion with you and colleagues on the challenges facing your sector and potential future opportunities.
I am grateful for your involvement with the session and your honesty during our discussions to further our work together in health and care. Thank you.
We have noted key points from our conversations during the session, including:
Concerns around consistency and sustainability of funding and contracting to ensure VCSE health and care initiatives can continue- The pressures caused by short term contracts and the challenges you face in terms of staff recruitment and retention
- The disparity between NHS, social care / VCSE pay rates, and how this threatens to destabilise your sector and the vital work that you do to support and care for people and communities living across West Yorkshire
- The importance of the work in VCSE community hubs in providing immediate support and care to local people and focusing on the delivery of early help and preventing ill health
- Changing the culture from a single service to a neighbourhood-based health and care approach; and
- Providing more clarity about how and where decisions are made in the NHS.
We have asked Kim Shutler, our Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme Senior Responsible Officer, and Jo-Anne Baker, Associate Director of the programme, to give you an update on work underway and to consider all of your feedback in more detail. This will help to ensure we do all we can to work together to address the challenges and concerns you face as well as keeping in view future opportunities. As NHS West Yorkshire we will also share these key points with our senior colleagues in local authorities, including council leaders and chief Executives, who are part of our West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Board.
Since our Health and Care Partnership began in 2016, we have been clear about the importance of and equity in our partnership with the VCSE sector across West Yorkshire, and the vital work delivered by you and your colleagues to keep people safe, healthy and well. The joint signing in July last year of a Memorandum of Understanding between the ICB and the VCSE sector via the Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme, alongside having Kim on our ICB Board and Jo’s ICB role, all aim to ensure our work together continues.
As you know, there are already many excellent VCSE examples of the positive difference being made. More information is on our website and if you would like to receive the programme’s regular newsletter please contact jo-anne.
Finally, we are passionate about making sure the voice of local people is central to our work and we have asked Healthwatch (the independent health and social care champion) across West Yorkshire to develop the West Yorkshire Voice to feed directly into decisions made about health and care. It will be developed in partnership with residents to reflect our diverse communities.
West Yorkshire Voice will be a network that will bring together individuals, groups, local panels, networks, and organisations to ensure the voice of people is at the heart of health and care decision-making in West Yorkshire. It will complement existing involvement mechanisms that are already in place at a local and West Yorkshire level, including via the VCSE sector. It will be a new way of working with people, communities and organisations that will not replace or duplicate what is already there.
The intention is to add to and build on existing approaches. This might be something that you and people you work with might be interested in joining, and to find out more and join us, you can contact Healthwatch West Yorkshire on 0113 898 0035 or email: info
Thank you again for attending the engagement session with NHS West Yorkshire Board members; we are grateful for the contribution you and your colleagues make to help to keep local people and communities healthy across West Yorkshire.
A follow-up message from Cathy Elliott, Rob Webster and Kim Shutler, 20 April 2023
At our NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) meeting on Tuesday 21 March we had a focused session on the sustainability of the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector. These are dedicated sessions for the Board to look in greater depth at areas which have been identified by the Partnership as a significant West Yorkshire system risk.
The Board day included a lunchtime engagement session attended by a number of VCSE colleagues from across West Yorkshire as well as ICB Board members. It was a big success which was due to people from the sector who came and spoke so openly about the challenges they face as well as the potential to create change. This was followed by a paper to the Board presented by the ICB VCSE Sector Lead, Kim Shutler. The paper and the recording of the meeting in public are on our website.
The paper builds on the work that has been undertaken through the West Yorkshire Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme (HPoC) over a period of time, including the development of the Memorandum of Understanding signed together in July last year, and recommendations for our five Place based partnerships to support VCSE sector sustainability. This includes the cost-of-living crisis work and ensuring that the sector is embedded throughout the strategies and plans of our Partnership. You can see the recently published West Yorkshire integrated care strategy on our website
The ICB Board discussed and recognised at the meeting the essential role that the VCSE plays in our Partnership, highlighting the excellent work happening across our 14,000 organisations in West Yorkshire. It also highlighted that there is huge potential to build on this work further in support of our strategic ambitions, especially around the essential work you all do in early help, preventing ill health and tackling inequalities.
It was, however, also discussed that the sector faces significant challenges of sustainability and to create the conditions for success, there are a number of actions which need to be taken.
There is an overview of the recommendations which were agreed by the Board in the report presented – some of which are for our local places to implement, and others which we will carry forward at a West Yorkshire level. Whilst we remain committed to acting as quickly as we can, we recognise that some of these areas of work will take longer if they are to be firmly embedded and make a sustainable difference for all.
As an immediate action NHS West Yorkshire ICB has agreed an initial non-recurrent allocation of £1 million for the VCSE with a focus on supporting sector sustainability and addressing health inequalities. Funding will be managed at place level (Bradford District and Craven; Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield District) and further information will shortly be made available on how to apply. There will also be an additional investment of £1.8 million for our VCSE hospice care across West Yorkshire.
We hope this is a helpful update, and if you would like to receive the Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme’s regular newsletter, please contact wyicb-wak.
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to VCSE sector colleagues across our Partnership for their incredible hard work and commitment to the people of West Yorkshire which we recognise is often in the face of significant challenge.
Cathy Elliott, Chair of NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and Deputy Chair of West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Board
Rob Webster, Chief Executive Officer, NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and CEO Lead for West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership
Kim Shutler, VCSE Sector Lead, West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, and Senior Responsible Officer for Harnessing the Power of Communities