Every contact – an opportunity to make a positive difference
Hello my name is Salma.
Each month, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust makes over 80,000 contacts. That’s 80,000 opportunities to make a difference to someone’s life. Every interaction with a person gives us an opportunity to better understand what matters most to them, their families and loved ones, and helps us to play our part in enabling them to live a life with dignity, hope, meaning and purpose.
Being part of an Integrated Care System that is trauma-informed and prioritises addressing health and wider inequalities provides the context in which we build on our well-established approach to partnerships in each of our places. Working with our partners across the system and in place enables us to focus our collective energies on reducing inequalities, prevention, and ensuring everyone gets care and support both when and where it is most needed.
Across all our partnerships and organisations we share common goals to deliver joined up care and support people experiencing mental health issues, learning disabilities, autism and long term conditions. We focus on collectively addressing the challenges our communities face, as well challenging ourselves to prioritise and focus on what matters most to people by placing them at the centre of everything we do.
At our Trust we take our partnership responsibilities seriously and are committed to working at every level to make our health and care services the best they can be, as well as playing our part in contributing to thriving communities.
Enabling people to access the right support at the right time
We are committed to enabling people to access the right support at the time they need it most. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic we know that people in our communities experienced higher levels of uncertainty, emotional distress and mental health issues. We developed a guide for adults, called Choose Well for Mental Health. It provided a summary of what services and support is available, and how to access support when needed. The guide was co-produced with local people, and has been received very positively. We have recently launched a Choose Well guide for children and young people, again co-produced, this time with young people from across our places. This means the guides can be owned by the people who have contributed to their development, and ensures they reflect the needs of our local communities.
Personalised partnership approaches to improving health and wellbeing
We recognise that we can improve health outcomes with our partners by developing personalised approaches. Seeing health and illness on a spectrum which is firmly rooted in relationships and contexts enables us to provide more holistic and joined up care.
West Yorkshire Integrated Care Partnership is recognised as one of four Creative Health Hubs supported by the National Centre for Creative Health to accelerate and amplify creative and cultural solutions and approaches to addressing inequalities and improving outcomes. As a Trust we have always recognised the huge importance of creativity in helping people look after their wellbeing and live fuller lives, whether this is through art, music, physical activity or through a more structured programme or activity. We have continued to invest in creative health approaches and are working with our partners in each of our places to enhance this. You can see more about our approach to creativity in this film.
In Calderdale we have been working with partners to deliver a holistic personalised approach to wellbeing that supports recovery and addresses inequalities. Partners have collectively invested in increasing opportunities for people to access creative and cultural approaches to support improvements in health and wellbeing and enable Calderdale residents to live fuller lives. Some of the developments include introducing music in care homes, and working with partners in primary care to improve uptake of annual health checks for people with learning disabilities and mental health issues by using co-produced artwork and accessible language to increase the likelihood of individuals and families accessing the health checks.
In Kirklees we play an active role as a partner in the Thriving Kirklees Partnership. Thriving Kirklees is a partnership of local health and wellbeing providers all working together to support children, young people and their families to thrive and be healthy. One area of focus has been to work together to increase our volunteer offer so we can offer a range of volunteering opportunities that help support children, young people and their families right across Kirklees. As an active partner we have jointly developed a shared approach, website presence and training to increase the number of volunteers in Kirklees.
In Barnsley, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield we have been working with local community groups to develop a series of short films which showcase service user and carer experiences. Focused on people with protected characteristics, the films provide local people with an opportunity to share their stories and lived experiences. We use these films in training, as a part of developing our equality impact assessments, and in ensuring people’s voices are recognised and included in the design of our services.
We work closely with our partners in Wakefield and have developed a Mental Health Alliance that has seen a collective response to addressing the needs of young people with mental health issues, recognising the increasing need. Our recovery college in Wakefield has recently launched a service aimed at young people, called the Discovery College. The aim is to co-produce recovery college courses with young people, for young people – an example of the way we include service users, carers and their families in developing services so they can provide appropriate and bespoke care. In Wakefield our Creative Minds team has been working with Grow Wakefield to provide support to people through the cultivation and growing of food. Through gardens, allotments and workshops they have helped spread the joy of gardening, helping to improve people’s mental wellbeing, and provided much needed food supplies to vulnerable groups. We have a fantastic allotment in our Caring Garden in Fieldhead Hospital, managed by our mental health service users which is an integral part in people’s recovery journeys.
Our recovery colleges in Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield co-design courses with local people so they are tailored to support people with their wellbeing, with courses as diverse as stress management, anxiety management, photography, cookery and horticultural skills.
Our commitment to make every contact count
In this current challenging context we recognise we have much more to do to continue to deliver the best care and support possible to the 1.2 million people we serve. To do this, our promise is that as an active partner in the Integrated Care System and in each of our places, we will make sure that every one of our 80,000 contacts counts so that every person can reach their potential and live well in their community.
Have a good weekend,
Salma
Hi I’m Waqas Tahir, the Clinical Diabetes Lead for the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and the Bradford District and Craven System Programme and a GP.
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