This week’s leadership blogs are from Rhona Mulvihill and Jo Baker

Posted on: 31 May 2024

This week’s leadership message comes from Rhona Mulvihill, the new Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate for West Yorkshire and Harrogate. We also have a blog from Jo Baker, Associate Director for Strategy and Transformation at NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, celebrating Volunteers Week 2024.

The maternity and neonatal independent senior advocate (maternity and neonatal ISA) is a new role being piloted in 21 areas of the county that will support women and families who have experienced an adverse outcome during maternity and neonatal care. The introduction of the role follows the actions identified in the Ockenden review (December 2020) into maternity care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust. Whether an adverse outcome happened recently or a while ago, ISAs make sure that the voices of women, service users and families are listened to, heard, and addressed by their care providers.

Rhona Mulvihill Hi I’m Rhona and I am very proud to be one of the first ISAs in the country taking part in this national pilot.

I know I have a very important job to do, and I’m fully committed to do it to the best of my ability. My role is to try to influence positive change for maternity services in the area and being the voice of women, birthing people and their families to ensure their experiences are being heard and reflected upon by service providers. I don’t have a clinical background but have a keen interest in maternity care, health inequalities and anti-discriminatory practice.

I’m a married mum of three children who keep me extremely busy. I have a teenage daughter, a 7-year-old son who is awaiting assessment for ADHD and a toddler. As you can imagine, my family take up most of my spare time and when the kids aren’t fighting, we do enjoy spending time together. I love to travel when given the chance and I enjoy good food and eating out. I have the worst sweet tooth and I usually decide where I want to eat based on the desserts they offer. My travels have taken me to the Middle East, Caribbean, America, Europe and Africa. I was lucky enough to get married in Mauritius, which was amazing.

My interest in maternity peaked when I first became a mum 14 years ago. I had what I believe was antenatal depression and a traumatic birthing experience, and I wanted to help support new mothers who felt as vulnerable as me. I started looking into becoming a midwife. However, my circumstances at the time and the fact that I am squeamish made this an unrealistic career move for me. My new journey as a first-time mum, I found very difficult. I felt isolated as I was living in London with little family around, vulnerable and low. Despite having an established career with the local authority, I was the first person in my team to go on maternity leave and upon my return, my manager was very unsupportive, and I felt discriminated against due to my new circumstances. At the time, I didn’t feel strong enough to fight; therefore it was agreed that I could take a career break.

Collage of images featuring Rhona Mulvihill - at graduation, at her wedding, with her family

When my eldest was 18 months I began my career break, moved back up north and I started a degree in childhood studies. I also completed an early years teacher status qualification alongside the final year of my honours degree (I love a challenge). I obtained a first-class honours degree, which I am very proud of and qualified as an early years teacher. I decided to leave my job and stay up north. When my second child was born, I experienced another traumatic birth. When he was 17 months, I started a master’s degree in psychology, which I got a merit for. I think studying gave me an avenue to channel those difficult experiences, gave me something else to focus on and heal. I have also achieved a certificate in counselling skills. I believe the knowledge gained through my education has been influential in my work over the years and I have been able to incorporate elements of my learning professionally and personally.

I have over 17 years’ experience of working with children, young people and their families from 0 – 19 in various roles and with varying needs, including those with behaviour that challenges in a range of formal and informal educational settings; targeting primarily ‘hard to reach’ and vulnerable young people and families with multiple and complex needs; providing intensive support, advocacy; and dealing with a range of safeguarding and difficult situations.

I have been an appropriate adult where I was advocating on behalf of young people and adults with disabilities when they were in police custody, ensuring they were treated fairly and had their rights upheld. After working in education, I became a service manager working for a children’s charity. The service I managed supported unemployed adults whilst also enabling families to have experiences they weren’t able to provide due to their socio-economic status. Whilst managing the service I also managed a small caseload of people with more complex needs, working closely with social services and mental health teams.

My role as a Maternity Neonatal Voice Partnership Chair reignited my interest in maternity services and enabled me to work alongside maternity professionals and members of the public by bringing about positive change using service user voice.

My careers in education, criminal justice and charity sectors sadly highlighted a great deal of inequalities. Therefore, advocacy has played a big part in my work in trying to ensure people were given a voice which also empowered some to start using their own voice. Despite the sector, I have always prided myself on being a person-centred practitioner, focusing on the person, child, family and striving to create an environment where they felt included, respected, valued, safe and heard.

The maternity and neonatal independent senior advocate role appealed to me as I felt I could use the skills, experience and knowledge I have developed though my life to make a difference in the lives of all women going forward, to those who have already experienced an adverse outcome or those who are yet to enter the maternity system.

Thank you for reading. You can find out more about the role and how to contact me on the website www.wypartnership.co.uk/senioradvocate.

Next week is National Volunteers Week 2024 – let's celebrate the contribution volunteers make in West Yorkshire!

Volunteers Week logo and Jo Baker

Hello, my name is Jo.

The first week in June is National Volunteers week here in the UK, when we take time to recognise the valuable role volunteers play across our health and care system.

In West Yorkshire, we have an estimated 132,213 volunteers in the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) alone, and based on nationally estimated distribution of volunteers across sectors, around a further 22,440 volunteers in the public sector (Mc Garvey et al 2020).

Here in West Yorkshire, we believe volunteering is transformational, both for those who volunteer and give their time, expertise and energy, and for the communities and individuals they support. Volunteering takes many forms – it might be at a foodbank, in a hospital, as a community responder, running a lunch club or activity group, as a Trustee, in a hospice, or as a befriender and so many other roles! Every one of these contributes to the health and well-being of our communities.

Thank you to every one of you. We really recognise and value the difference you are making for the people of West Yorkshire.

In recognition of the value of volunteering across our system, in 2022, we established a West Yorkshire Integrated Volunteering Approaches Group. Our aim is to work together to strengthen volunteering across our health and care system and maximise the potential for both volunteers and for the health and well-being of our population. This group is made up of volunteering managers and leaders from hospital trusts, VCSE organisations, hospices, the wider NHS and Yorkshire Ambulance Service.

We believe that by working as a collaborative of volunteering leaders we are stronger and have the potential to accelerate change across the integrated care system, building on the potential that exists, maximising resources and improving outcomes. We are able to test approaches and innovation across sectors and organisations, and work with a more diverse range of volunteers including those with lived experience, from areas of deprivation and from different population groups. The different experiences, strengths and skills each partner brings creates a rich and varied foundation for a West Yorkshire-wide approach.

As a group we have already developed a set of volunteer principles which have been adopted by our integrated care board (ICB) and aligned with the approach in South Yorkshire ICB and Humber and North Yorkshire ICB. These volunteer principles articulate our agreed, shared standards and ways of working for the benefit of volunteers, staff, our partners, and our communities.

Our ambition is to build on these and to work together to strengthen the role of volunteering across health and care, including through increasing access and inclusion (including recruitment, support and retention of a diverse range of volunteers), enabling volunteer movement across organisations, agreeing shared and transferable training and testing new approaches in practice in different health and care settings.

If your organisation hasn't signed up to the West Yorkshire Volunteering Principles yet, you can do so by emailing wyicb-wak.hpoc.program@nhs.net.

And now you can have your say on the future of volunteering in West Yorkshire!

Building on our volunteer principles, we have been working together as a collaborative of volunteering leaders to develop a West Yorkshire integrated volunteering strategy.

The strategy is on one page – we wanted to keep it simple and focused on what we believe is best done together on a West Yorkshire footprint. It sets out our shared priorities for the next few years, building on the good practice at place and aligning approaches to volunteering, working more collaboratively to build resilience and consistency across our system. Access and inclusion are at the heart of the strategy.

We are now keen to hear what everyone thinks and hope you can help us bring together feedback from different organisations, sectors, volunteer managers, volunteers themselves and anyone else you think has an interest in volunteering.

If you would like to have your say or bring together a group to feed into the process, please e mail jo-anne.baker@nhs.net and I will share the draft strategy with you, along with supporting notes and a simple online feedback form. We welcome your input!

Once again – a BIG THANK YOU to all volunteers – your work is invaluable.

"Volunteers don't get paid – not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless."

Thanks for reading,
Jo

What else has been happening this week?

Pre-election period guidance

Following the announcement that there will be a general election on 4 July, the Cabinet Office has announced that the pre-election period started on Saturday 25 May and has issued guidance.

NHS England have also issued pre-election guidance.

A fond farewell

Karen Coleman with a looking out for our neighbours campaign sign This week, we bid a fond farewell to Karen Coleman, Deputy Director of Communications and Involvement for the Integrated Care Board, who is taking early retirement on 31 May 2024.

Karen has worked for the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership since the very beginning in 2016 and has been part of the journey ever since. We thank her for her huge contribution to the Partnership, for all her professional advice and support for her colleagues and the people of West Yorkshire, and we wish her a long, happy and healthy retirement.

Fatima Khan-Shah appointed as Race Equality Partnership Chair for Sheffield

Fatima Khan Shah Congratulations to our West Yorkshire Inclusivity Champion, Fatima Khan-Shah, who has been appointed as the Chair of the Race Equality Partnership for Sheffield (REPS).

REPS, which launched earlier this year, is an active, collaborative network of people and organisations with a shared aim to make Sheffield an anti-racist city. REPS has been established by partners including public sector institutions, local businesses and community groups, following the publication of the Race Equality Commission (REC), in July 2022. It will play a pivotal role in supporting the city to deliver against the Commission’s recommendations and secure a legacy from the work.

The role of Chair will be to provide visible and collaborative leadership of REPS, working with key partners across the city.

Fatima was appointed to the role due to her extensive experience leading on nationally recognised and multi-award-winning programmes around equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), as well as for her passion for Sheffield, the city she grew up in.

Fatima currently works with leaders across the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, where she provides expert advice on inequality, inclusion and addresses factors of social, economic and health inequalities.

Fatima is West Yorkshire’s first ever Inclusivity Champion, as part of the mayor’s pledge to achieve greater equality across the region. She was also the first Chair of West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Race Equality Network and is part of the Partnership’s Board and the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board.

NHS Announces 143 hospitals to roll out ‘Martha’s Rule’ in next step in major patient safety initiative

The NHS has announced the 143 hospital sites that will test and roll out Martha’s Rule in its first year. Evaluation of how the system works in these sites over the course of this year will inform proposals for Martha’s Rule to be expanded further across all acute hospitals, subject to future government funding.

The purpose of Martha’s Rule is to provide a consistent and understandable way for patients and families to seek an urgent review if their or their loved one’s condition deteriorates, and they are concerned this is not being responded to.

West Yorkshire sites include Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, Pinderfields Hospital, Calderdale Royal Hospital, Leeds General Infirmary, Bradford Royal Infirmary and Airedale General Hospital. There’s more information on the NHS England website.

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust rated for use of data

CMHT data team Following a validation visit last Friday from HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) - global advisors on digital and data in health environments, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded HIMSS Stage 6 (on a scale of 0-7) for its use of data against the Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity (AMAM). They are the only trust or hospital that has achieved this level within the UK or Europe. This reflects not only how a system has been implemented, but also how well embedded it is in the organisation, and how the data is used.

You can read the full story on the Trust’s website.

May Measure Month

Wakefield District blood pressure champions May Measure Month is dedicated to educating the public about and increasing awareness of hypertension, more commonly known as high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is really common but also preventable and easy to treat. This May Measure Month, why not get checked out, know your numbers and reduce your risk of serious illness with a quick and easy blood pressure check. And, please, strike up some conversations with your friends and family about how they can reduce their risk of heart attacks, strokes and other serious illnesses. You can find out more in a recent blog by Emily Turner, Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Prevention Clinical Lead.

World hypertension day collage World hypertension day also falls in May, and to mark the occasion, an event took place at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT), inviting staff and members of the public to have a blood pressure check. Atrial fibrillation checks, kidney disease and diabetes conversations were also held during the event. The event was a system approach, including NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) CVD prevention programme, LTHT public health team and supporting clinical staff, Leeds City Council public health team, Reed Wellbeing (West Yorkshire’s diabetes prevention provider) Xyla (West Yorkshire type 2 diabetes remission provider) and Leeds Health Awareness team.

Out of 75 blood pressure checks, 25 people were found to have pre-high blood pressure, with another 24 found to have high blood pressure, with 11 of those being advised to see their GP. Of those with high blood pressure 14 had conversations with the renal nurses. We also screened 88 people, with three found to have atrial fibrillation and signposted to primary care for further investigations.

It would be fantastic to see this approach replicated across our West Yorkshire hospitals, work places or community events and venues for Know Your Numbers week (2 to 8 September), If you are interested in supporting this in your local area, please get in touch with laura.williams114@nhs.net.

Relationships matter: Transforming communities in Bradford District and Craven

Humera Khan and friends Humera Khan, founder, director and CEO of Happy Healthy You, has published a blog about the importance of having strong, trusted relationships with our local communities, showing kindness, and joining people where they are – in places in the heart of our communities.

UK government resilience website goes live

The government has launched gov.uk/prepare, a new website to help build preparedness for emergencies and crises. It provides accessible and actionable advice on practical steps that individuals, households and communities can take to improve their resilience to a range of risks.