This week’s leadership message comes from Kim Shutler

Posted on: 28 January 2021

This week’s leadership message comes from Kim Shutler, CEO for The Cellar Trust based in Bradford.

Hello my name is Kim.

Kim Shutler.jpg My day job is the Chief Executive of The Cellar Trust. We are a Bradford based mental health charity which delivers a range of services from crisis to employment support. My voluntary job is the Chair of Bradford's Voluntary and Community Sector Assembly which is part of the voice and influence structure we have in the district for our sector.

I started off as a rep on the A&E Delivery Board. It has changed a lot since then but I found it intimidating. Those who know me, know I am no shrinking violet but after a couple of bad experiences of being shut down in my contributions, I didn't speak for some time again. But.... I stuck with it, and slowly, things started to shift and the influence started to work. We had more discussions around the wider determinants of health, around integrated working, about seeing the people behind the 95% performance target, about what the voluntary community and social enterprise (VCSE) could offer. I have now been the Chair of the Assembly for a little over 2 years now and I did it because I saw the huge potential the sector had to play a bigger, more influential and impactful role in the district.

The role of a VCSE representative is a tricky or near-on impossible one. How can you possibly represent a sector so large and diverse? The answer is that you can't.... but in the world that we operate, by necessity, what our stakeholders say is that they need to know who to talk to and it needs to be easy… and for them often that means one or a small number of people. So, what I have come to learn over my time is that what you are when you sit at those tables is advocate and influencer on behalf of the sector, and the people it serves. This is a hugely imperfect model of course, but the benefits of a place at that table to the sector vastly outweighs the disadvantages. When I do my rep role, I can never claim to do it perfectly but I can say I do it to the best of my ability and guided by my values.

We are lucky in Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven. In other areas of the country the sector has been decimated, there is no such thing as VCSE infrastructure; the VCSE are most certainly NOT at the table. Whilst we face major ongoing challenges of sustainability as a sector and things are most certainly not all rosy, I take great heart in how far we have come. Unlike the majority of areas of the country, in Bradford, the VCSE were part of the COVID-19 Gold Command, we have a seat at every strategic board and committee, we are a signature to the Strategic Partnering Agreement and in my world of health and care, our frontline services are recognised alongside statutory provision. Is that every individual? No it is not!

Do we still face a great deal of snobbery amongst some or the perception that we are the soft fluffy, nice to have sector! Yes we do.

But things have, and continue to improve and I feel proud to be part of a partnership doing that. Much of this can be attributed to key leaders in the wider system, who have recognised this value and taken meaningful steps to create the shift.

The things that I think, or hope, we all as leaders across the partnership recognise and urgently need to address the disconnect between the top table, the grass roots and community voice. VCSE are good at this, we have trust and reach where others do not, but it is not the proxy for communities. Lots of us can be subsumed in buzz word bingo, acronyms till they come out of our eyeballs and numbers after numbers but we must all challenge ourselves about how we both remain connected to the reality for people AND embolden, support and enable community leaders to take a seat at the table. Only then will we start to drive meaningful and sustainable change around addressing the ever-widening health inequalities.

Donna Kinnair and Brendan Brown.jpg As Professor Dame Donna Kinnair’s West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Independent BAME Review highlighted, there is much work to be done to diversify our leadership, to genuinely co-design with communities and to hear their voices. There is no quick fix or easy, one size fits all answer here. Making the changes we need requires difficult and uncomfortable conversations, brave decisions and moving away from what my colleague Brendan Brown (Airedale NHS Foundation Trust CEO) referred to as ‘ticking the box but missing the point.’

I think these conversations and actions have started and I have great hope that they will be sustained. During COVID-19 we have seen communities mobilise amazingly. We have seen our local VCSE step up like never before. If people were not convinced before about the power of these things then I hope they are now. The pandemic has taught us lessons as a system about agility, about removing red tape, about bold innovation. These things are the bread and butter for the VCSE.

As our West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership continues to develop, I hope that the role of the VCSE will continue to develop and grow alongside it. I hope we can invest in and develop the talent alongside that of other health and care colleagues. I also hope we can share practice across the whole Partnership to enable some of the levelling up that is needed, and I importantly hope we can do more to enable the sustainable, long term funding that we so desperately need if we are to maximise our input and impact.

The potential is huge and the prospect is exciting. So… if you are a VCSE colleague reading this, please step forward to represent your sector, we need you. And if you are another member of the Partnership from outside the sector, remember to invite us to the table as equal partners, when you do that, you and the people we are all here to serve will reap the rewards.

Thank you for reading.

Kim

What else has been happening this week?

This week it was recorded that 100,000 lives have been very sadly lost to coronavirus in the UK. Our thoughts and condolences are with everyone who has lost family members, loved ones and colleagues.

West Yorkshire’s first large vaccination centre opens

West Yorkshire’s first large-scale vaccination centre opened its doors to patients on Tuesday 26 January. Staff from The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Spectrum Community Health CIC are delivering vaccinations at the centre that has been set up at Spectrum Community Health, Navigation Walk in Wakefield. You can read more here.

Safeguarding stars!

Karen Jackson.jpg Locala has been awarded the prestigious ‘Leaders in Safeguarding Award’ for our Safeguarding work across all our services – and Locala is only the second health organisation to be accredited with the award.

Organisations that are approved for the award are entered on the Leaders in Safeguarding Register and are entitled to use the Leaders in Safeguarding logo. The award lasts for two years from the inspection. Well done to all involved!

Pictured on the right is Locala's CEO, Karen Jackson.

Children and young people

The Partnership’s Children, Young People and Families Programme Board met this week, chaired by Tim Ryley, Accountable Officer for NHS Leeds and joint senior responsible officer for the programme.

The Board received a presentation on the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), reducing serious violence and the Partnership’s adversity, trauma and resilience programme of work. This is jointly led by the Partnership’s children, young people and families; population health programmes and the VRU. The vision for the programme is to work together with people with real life experience and colleagues from across all sectors and organisations to ensure West Yorkshire and Harrogate is a trauma informed and responsive system. A three day Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Knowledge Exchange is being planned for March to bring together all involved so we can share evidence, good practice and raise awareness to inform a responsive journey. The Board committed to the visions to make West Yorkshire and Harrogate a trauma informed and responsive system and supported the three day virtual event.

A Young People’s Board has been established to support engagement and co-production with young people across the Partnership’s programmes of work. The group and work is supported by the Yorkshire and Humber Youth Work Unit which is all about making links with local groups. Workshops are currently taking place to design and produce a communications and engagement plan for the Board which will include a name for the Board, principles for how we work together and mechanisms for wider engagement with children and young people across the area.

Updates were also provided on each of the Programme’s priority work streams, including the Prevention Network which involves taking a life course approach to healthy weight as well as the importance of nutrition. The Partnership’s Physical Activity Steering Group was launched in January to look at how we embed physical activity across the system.

System Oversight and Assurance Group

The Partnership’s System Oversight and Assurance Group (SOAG) met on Monday 25 January. This group of leaders meets monthly to take an overview of progress on our shared priority programmes, and to agree collective action to help tackle shared challenges. They discussed the Ockenden Report: emerging findings and recommendations from the Independent Review of Maternity Services at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust; urgent and emergency care, including winter pressures. They also discussed improving planned care; finance; innovation, personalised care as well as future public representation on key areas of engagement.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Communications and Engagement Network

The network met on Thursday 28 January. Over 30 communication and engagement colleagues came together. The Network meets every three months to share learning, good practice and what’s coming up. Colleagues received an update on the work of the Partnership’s Cancer Alliance; and took part in a Kings Fund led conversation about the user experience of integration; as well as hearing more about the experience of people who are clinically extremely vulnerable and the West Yorkshire Vaccine Programme.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate Programmes

Our programme leads for our priority areas met on Thursday 28 January. There was an update on work pressures, the pandemic, infection rates; an update on tackling health inequalities, the progress taking place regarding the BAME Review Action Plan, and the Partnership’s future operating model.

Partnership launch of staff suicide prevention initiative

Our Partnership will launch an innovative staff suicide prevention campaign targeted at more than 100,000 health, care, voluntary and community service colleagues working in organisations large and small across the area. Launching on the 4 February ‘Time to Talk’ day, the campaign aims to get people in the workplace talking about mental health to prevent the risk of suicide. Over 160 organisations have already registered to get involved.

Preventing suicide in targeted areas by 2022 is one of our 10 big ambitions.

The 'Check-in' campaign aims to prevent staff suicide and promote a wellbeing culture by normalising the conversation around suicide and mental health as well as providing training, including links to credible sources such as the Zero Suicide Alliance, and signposting to support in and out the workplace. The campaign, co-produced with people who have direct experience of suicide, has been created by staff coming together from NHS services, councils, Healthwatch and community groups, including the Samaritans and Platform 1 in Huddersfield.

The Partnership has secured funding from NHS England/NHS Improvement to the end of March 2022 of more than £1million to develop and maintain a Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub for all staff working in health and care services in West Yorkshire and Harrogate. The campaign will link to this important support. Open to all, you can join the campaign now at https://bit.ly/2Nh0wfr or find out more about this important work at: staffcheck-in.co.uk/toolkit from 4 February 2021. You can read more here.

Pioneering Bradford course supporting paediatric teams providing enhanced nursing care in hospital and in the community

A paediatric nursing skills course developed by clinicians at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT) launched last month. It is the first course of its kind in the UK and aims to provide ‘training that empowers teams to provide high quality, integrated nursing care for sick children in hospital and at home.

Paediatric Consultant Dr Mat Mathai (pictured) said: "The course is part of our wider vision to keep children ‘Happy, Healthy and at Home’. We want all sick children and young people to get the best care they can and as close to home as possible."

The EPNS course has its origins in the bespoke training programme delivered by the hospital by home nurses as part of the ‘ACE’ team. Despite the pandemic the course on its pilot run was oversubscribed. There are nurses on it from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Lancashire and London. The Children and Young Persons’ Ambulatory Care Experience (ACE) has proved hugely successful throughout the Bradford district since being rolled out from BRI in December 2017, and aims to prevent unnecessary admissions to hospital by bringing care to young patients remotely.

The service sees the Trust’s experienced community nursing team treat children aged 0 to 16 years old at home, under the expert eye of the hospital’s consultant paediatricians, through the use of regular telephone clinical huddles and digital appointments. The team recently also became the first healthcare provider in the UK to partner with TytoCare, a handheld, modular device and AI-powered telehealth platform which provides remote, real-time and on-demand examinations for children and young people. The pilot was Highly Commended in the ‘Most Promising Pilot’ category at the HTN Awards in December 2020.

Looking out for our neighbours – evaluation report

Phase 5 Social media graphics-06.png Phase three of ‘Looking out for our neighbours’ the mini series has now come to an end and a campaign evaluation has been undertaken. A few highlights from the report are that; from 16 November – 18 January we had 2,905 visits to the campaign website and received 8,153 clicks, likes, comments and shares on Facebook with our content reaching over 91,881 on the platform. We reached 23,800 people on YouTube. Our adverts on Facebook and YouTube helped us reach over 115,681 people. Many of these were new audiences we haven’t previously engaged with before.

We are pleased that the campaign received so much support from partners and online communities engaged in the conversation. We will continue to promote important messages such as people staying connected and encourage people and places to continue to use the online service directory Thank you as always for championing and supporting this vital community campaign. You can read the full report here.

Producing a Partnership Anti-racist Campaign

The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership review into the impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities and support needed for Black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities and colleagues published its report on the 22 October 2020. One of the report recommendations includes the coproduction of an anti-racism campaign, which recognises and appreciates that BAME people are not one homogenous population. The project group to develop the campaign met on Wednesday 27 January.

Integral to any campaign is the impact of interpersonal, institutional and structural racism on inequalities in health outcomes for BAME communities. These refer to the range of different issues people might experience. For example, direct experiences of racism from other people, ways in which organisations might act to exclude certain groups of people, and fundamental differences in life opportunities. Racism is experienced differently and to different degrees by different groups of people. The experiences of BAME communities and colleagues, in and out of the workplace, differ considerably. These factors were considered throughout the review and tackling these head on, however uncomfortable, is instrumental to the success of a campaign. We will keep you posted as the work develops.

WYH Cancer Alliance Board Meeting – January 2021

The Cancer Alliance Board held its January meeting and opened by acknowledging the extreme pressures facing the West Yorkshire and Harrogate system, and the efforts of all frontline staff to maintain urgent and emergency care for cancer, alongside responding to the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Items on the agenda included:

Cancer workforce development priorities: Health Education Cancer Workforce Lead Rachel Moser is working with the Alliance and outlined the proposed approach to transformation and development of the cancer workforce across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. The initial areas and programmes of focus are those with identified workforce challenges or initiatives already underway, such as diagnostics and new models of care; non surgical oncology; primary care and living with and beyond cancer; end of life and palliative care; cancer nurse specialist workforce, and healthcare science.
Maintenance of urgent and emergency cancer treatments: The efforts of acute provider colleagues in supporting the restoration of services and mitigating adverse impact were acknowledged and praised, in the context of the ongoing and escalating challenge of the ongoing rise in COVID cases. Data around levels of activity were shared with Board members.
Cancer Service Development Funding: High level priorities for 2021/22 were reviewed and agreed. It was agreed that overall aims for the system in relation to cancer should be to minimise delays to diagnosis and treatment for people on cancer pathways, prioritising those pathways and procedures most impacted by the pandemic, and to mitigate the risk of deterioration in outcomes for tumour groups and/or populations who may have been disproportionately impacted and where a proactive approach to encourage presentation may be required. A number of priority objectives were also agreed.
Cancer Innovation Programme supporting COVID 19 resilience and beyond: Board members received a progress report on the implementation of a number of innovations aimed at supporting recovery from the impact of the pandemic and ongoing diagnostic capacity building, including the PinPoint Test, Cytosponge and Colon Capsule Endoscopy.
Community Patient/Panel work on attitudes to restoration of cancer activity during the pandemic: Board members received a verbal update on recent work with the Patient Panel to review attitudes and preferences in relation to the maintenance and recovery of cancer services. This had generated a rich discussion and a report will be widely circulated. In general, patients who have received care in the acute sector in recent months were very positive about the experience and wished to thank staff for the obvious efforts made to help service users feel as safe and confident as possible. Experience of accessing primary care was more variable.

Booting out the bleepers

Two of our hospital trusts have successfully secured funding to support the roll out of clinical communication tools that will hopefully help to replace the traditional pager bleep systems. Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust will use their £64,000 allocation to trial a clinical messaging and task allocation application. And Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who bid for £47,000, will adopt a secure messaging solution.

Dawn Greaves, the Partnership’s Digital Programme Manager, said: “Making best use of modern communications will help colleagues connect quicker and more effectively. Reducing reliance on bleeps and replacing them with more up to date solutions means clinicians on call receive the most critical messages straight away so that patients receive the right care at the right time, ultimately improving healthcare and saving lives.”

NHSX launched its clinical communication framework to help NHS trusts procure communication services. The aim is to phase out outdated technology like pagers by the end of 2021 and accelerate the adoption of proven digital alternatives, such as mobile devices and apps.