The way we work is making a difference

• Working with community champions and faith leaders to help increase uptake in local communities
• Training and conversations pack provided for community champions to support the above
• Promotion of grab a jab weekend to highlight walk-in vaccination availability and encourage uptake
• Securing regional and national media coverage for initiatives to encourage uptake, including vaccination clinics at a circus in Halifax and at My Lahore restaurant in Bradford
• Providing interviews and commentary to encourage uptake amongst pregnant women, including feature on The One Show, Look North and Newsnight.

• We appointed 32 fellows to join our Health Equity Fellowship Programme to help make West Yorkshire a more equity informed system
• Thirteen voluntary and community groups were awarded a share of £500,000 in health inequality grant funding to facilitate a diverse range of projects working in partnership with local health providers, all of whom represented areas which had been disproportionately affected by the COVID pandemic. At a full-day event in September 2021 we showcased the successes of these innovative projects, delivered by communities, for communities. See making a difference through funding pages for more information 
• Over 1,000 people joined our first and second Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Knowledge Exchanges with each held over three days and in partnership with the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). Our West Yorkshire Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Network has around 150 members including people with lived experience. We were proud to launch the Trauma Informed Education Settings Insight West Yorkshire Guidance
• The ‘every sleep a safe sleep’ staff resource, to help reduce the risk of the sudden and unexpected death of an infant, has been shortlisted in the Nursing Times
• Implemented £100,000 green social prescribing grant funding using our survey to ask people about their relationship with their local environment, looking at issues such as access to green spaces and nature-based activities
• Received over 100 pledges for our All Hands In campaign to help tackling climate change together. We also produced our Green Plan for West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership
• Working with the VRU, we engaged with bars, pubs, clubs, restaurants and hotels across Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, and Wakefield, to launch a licensing initiative to help boost safety, health, and wellbeing in the night time economy
• Worked with Fairhealth to develop health inequalities training modules for primary and secondary care colleagues to develop action plans for each community of practice
• We were one of 11 integrated care systems in the country to secure £80,000 to reduce inequalities in specific clinical areas for targeted population groups through improved community engagement as part of CORE20Plus5 Community Connectors. This video has more information
• Worked with experts by experience to develop population specific training resources, co-produced with community members for transgender and Gypsy and Traveller people to communicate how access and experience of health and care services could be improved. Leeds  Gate – Gypsy & Traveller Exchange developed an educational tool and resource pack to support colleagues  in running group practitioner workshops
• Groundswell UK were commissioned to carry out peer research with homeless and rough sleepers across Calderdale, Kirklees, and Wakefield to better understand the barriers they face in accessing health care. A further project with Groundswell UK and Bevan Health Care was commissioned to support the homeless and rough sleeper people living in Leeds and Bradford to access better health care
• Co-ordinated workshops involving parents and carers of children and young people to look at the link between poor indoor air quality, housing conditions and asthma and launched £1 million affordable winter warmth funding to help keep people warm (affordable warmth campaign materials)
• Climate change lunch and learn sessions were open to all and covered many aspects of sustainability in healthcare both clinical and non-clinical. They were very well received by people across the whole country, and we are now in our second series
• A regional Anchors Network has launched to support the development of an anchors approach across Yorkshire and Humber and the North East.

For more information see the Improving Population Health Programme annual report.

Accessible websites: A successful funding bid to NHS England’s Digital First programme is being used to improve GP practice websites to make sure they are easy to access and use for all including people with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss. One example of good practice is Calder Community Practice

Diabetes: Implemented the communications and activity plan to support the increase in referrals to the Healthier You NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme (NDPP). This includes national education initiatives to support prevention, for example the Healthy Living app.  ​​​​

All our local places took part in an exercise to boost referrals to the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme without increasing demands on health care staff time. This included producing a GP pack for all areas to mail out to patients at risk of type 2 diabetes inviting them to take up a free place on the NHD Diabetes Prevention Programme (NDPP) staggered to coincide with billboard posters, featuring Dr Waqas Tahir, the Clinical Diabetes Lead in 14 locations across West Yorkshire, radio and half page ads in TITO, a community magazine. Referrals increased by 153% in the second six months of the year because of the pack being rolled out. Other examples include:

• Created and sustained campaign specific social media content across West Yorkshire. Hashtag analysis of #Let’sDiaBEATthis in a seven-day period covering 8 to 15 November 2021, which coincided with World Diabetes Day, had a reach of 324,400
• Both written and recorded case studies from those who have attended the NDPP including John Ebo keeping a video diary of his journey through the programme: part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5; part 6 and part 7. Published several case studies on the difference our partnership is making pages relating to diabetes and also on our diabetes case studies and project pages
• Produced a short video showing how to complete the referral form to the NDPP.

During national Stroke Awareness Month in May 2022 the Partnership ran a campaign to raise awareness of stroke and the impact it can have on people and those close to them. The campaign promoted the area’s local support groups, and opportunities for people to join the Patient and Carer Assurance Group. Read the case study Stroke awareness: West Yorkshire Health & Care Partnership (wypartnership.co.uk)

Carers Week took place from 6 – 12 June 2022 - the theme was ‘Visible, Valued and Supported’. A different theme including health and social care issues affecting carers, work and employment, younger carers, older carers and mental health and wellbeing was communicated each day. A toolkit of resources was shared with partners to use locally on the Carers Week 2022 webpage (www.wypartnership.co.uk/carers-week-2022).

Young carers action day: This year’s Young Carers Action Day took place on 16 March 2022. We promoted this special day through a series of co-produced resources including a billboard poster, flyers, presentations for education and primary care settings and publicity on social media. Read the case study Supporting young carers and young adult carers: West Yorkshire Health & Care Partnership (wypartnership.co.uk)

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All WY HCP campaigns are coproduced with colleagues and communities and built from local people’s insight. Examples from 2021/2022 include:

• Root Out Racism
• ‘All Hands In’ climate change campaign
• Perinatal Mental Health Campaign
• Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub
• Young adults accessing accident and emergency units
• Check-In with your mate suicide prevention campaign
• Leaving a Gap, primary care campaign

Looking out for each other (young people). Phase 4 of #OurNeighbours. Our #SpreadTheKindness campaign launched on 13 September 2021. The campaign aimed to reach young people living, in education or working across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. It was created to encourage young people aged 15-24 years to #SpreadTheKindness with their friends and peers. A photo montage of some of the highlights from the campaign has been created and can be viewed on the website with the evaluation report.

Together we can originated in Calderdale and Kirklees. Winter 2021/22 was a timely opportunity to work together across West Yorkshire and roll out the first collective winter communications campaign. The aim of the campaign was to encourage people to use health services responsibly as the NHS was preparing to deal with the busiest winter in its history. Campaign headlines included 25,639 unique visitors to the website and  8,782,832 people reached through 351 outdoor advertising sites across West Yorkshire. The final report Together We Can - winter evaluation for 2021/22 is available to view.

Local Maternity System (LMS) virtual engagement event: On 10 February an engagement workshop was held with the aim of increasing and improving maternity service user engagement and diversity across the LMS. You can read the report on the website.

Workforce. The West Yorkshire Mental Health Partnership collaborative of three mental health trusts worked together throughout 2021 and 2022 on a recruitment drive. The drive centred on three virtual recruitment fairs which offered participants the opportunity to meet and talk to recruiters from the trusts in real time, and ultimately to be interviewed for roles. The fairs were supported by a digital awareness campaign using social media to drive registrations for the events. Royal Mail door drops were used to reach people beyond digital means, putting our creative and key messaging straight into the homes of our target audience. Over 135,000 leaflets were distributed over five-days. You can read the campaign evaluation report here. 

In response to the national Learning Disability Mortality Review (LeDeR) programme report (University of Bristol June 2021), we announced a package of measures aimed at reducing the health inequalities faced by people with learning disabilities in West Yorkshire. The Learning Disabilities Health Inequalities Challenge programme covers various initiatives to raise awareness of the impact we can make on people’s lives by ensuring equitable care for people with a learning disability.  Despite the challenges presented by the constraints of the pandemic, our Learning Disability Health and Care Champions have continued to work with us on projects for several of our programmes. You can see more of their work on our website.

As part of Stress Awareness Month, the Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub carried out a campaign to support staff who are experiencing stress. Data tells us that stress, anxiety and depression are the most common presentations by staff referring themselves into our one-to-one therapy service. In response, we created a package of stress support materials, including podcasts, videos, online courses and more.

The Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub mandate includes a requirement to target specific staff groups with mental health and emotional wellbeing support. One of these groups is staff who work in NHS Trusts – clinical and non-clinical, including volunteers.  In response, the Hub created a digital campaign using geofencing technology to deliver messages straight into the hands of Trust staff via their smartphones. The campaign evaluation report can be found here.

Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub: Targeted communications activity for care home workers and primary care included a traditional print newsletter for care homes, a newsletter for primary care, a podcast for primary care and a podcast for care homes.  Other groups targeted for support include men, with a podcast recorded for them as part of International Men’s Day.

Diabetes: Build on the Let’s DiaBEAT this campaign incorporating healthy weight, obesity and nutrition programmes including being an early adopter for the Digital Weight Management Programme. For example…

• Around 90 social prescribers, wellbeing coaches, link workers, health champions and support workers attended an online Let’s DiaBEAT this event to find out the crucial role they can play in preventing type 2 diabetes. See the event write up published to the diabetes pages on the website and the event evaluation summary
• Around 45 practice nurses and healthcare assistants attended an event on 22 September 2022 as part of our Let’s DiaBEAT this campaign. See the diabetes pages on the website and the event evaluation summary. 100% of attendees said they would now refer patients to the Diabetes UK know your risk tool as a direct result of attending the event and rated the events overall 9/10
• We’ve created an online diabetes resource for GP, diabetes and communication colleagues which acts as a central repository for marketing, training guides, posters, radio ads, social media assets etc.
• Equipping GPs with tips and tools when supporting patients with diabetes who are fasting during Ramadan including a GP guide. Our Diabetes Lead, Dr Waqas Tahir, was also interviewed for ITV in March 2022
• With a third of GP practices signing up to Healthy.IO we became the leading partnership in the country to roll out the project. Using smartphone-powered home kidney health technology patients can test their albumin to creatinine ratio - a test to highlight early signs of kidney damage in at risk patients, including those with diabetes and hypertension.

Low calorie diet pilot: Healthy Weight, Obesity and Nutrition Programme with supported delivery by the diabetes team. 

• The NHS Low Calorie Diet Programme is a free service for people aged 18 to 65 who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last six years.
• The service has been commissioned by NHS England and is being delivered by Xyla Health and Wellbeing who are providing the digitally led 12-month programme being piloted in West Yorkshire. It follows two large studies (Direct and Droplet) which showed that low calorie diet treatment for people living with type 2 diabetes who were overweight could improve their diabetes control, reduce diabetes-related medication, and even achieve remission.
• West Yorkshire was one of 11 sites in England chosen to pilot the service for two years from March 2022, with 500 places available. Referrals to the service are made by GPs who are working to identify eligible patients. It is important that all patients who are referred must be engaged and committed to taking part in the programme.
• To support our busy GPs with this work, the Partnership’s Diabetes Programme, including the programme’s clinical lead Dr Waqas Tahir, ran three training session in March and April 2022. The sessions aimed to clarify eligibility criteria, explain the referral process, and give attendees the opportunity to ask questions.
• The links to the training session recordings, and further details about the NHS Low Calorie Diet Programme, have been put together into a resource pack that is supporting GPs to make appropriate referrals to the service which could prove to be life changing. For GP practices, we also produced a short video with Dr Waqas Tahir describing the referral process.

Joint workshops across the partnership with Thrive by Design (formerly mHabitat), digital place leads, providers, tech companies, public and patients to increase access and uptake has taken place. Engagement activities to increase inclusion, break down barriers and address recommendations from Healthwatch reports, digital maturity, and other assessments continues.

We published a new Partnership three-year digital strategy to help put communities in control of their own health and wellbeing via new technology. The strategy supports our ambitions for using digital tools to promote health and wellness, reduce inequalities and deliver safe, joined up high-quality care for all. We also produced a summary for members of the public and a plan on a page. The Partnership worked collaboratively across the area with input from communities to develop the plan.

Inclusive digital transformation: Across the UK approximately 14.9 million people are not able to easily access and use digital. These people are more likely to be in groups who most need health and care services. That means there is a high risk that the digital transformation of health and care services will deepen existing health inequalities. Thrive by Design looked at how to co-design inclusion into digital transformation across the region. In West Yorkshire we highlighted digital and access to data as a priority area. For more information see the case study on the Thrive by Design website.

Understanding the needs of people better: We worked with Thrive By Design to understand the needs of people when considering remote consultation platforms. This included:

• A rapid evidence review including Leeds Healthwatch Insight Work, Oxford Inclusive Remote Video Consultation Research, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust Remote Consultation Discovery Research and other literature
• Research with groups in West Yorkshire who are more excluded including older people (Age UK Wakefield), people with visual impairments (Kirklees Visual Impairment Network), LGBTQ+ community (Brunswick centre) and asylum seekers (Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network).
• At separate primary care and secondary group sessions we looked at what the partnership is like now, what barriers there are to using virtual appointments/consultations and how we could make things better. To find out more see the:

1. summary report published by Thrive by Design
2. primary care group session feedback
3. secondary care group session feedback

The Digital Programme hosted two packed online masterclasses focussing on digital first in primary care and digitised communities. Together we looked at what initiatives could be adapted across West Yorkshire as well as considering the digital future after COVID-19, funding proposals, and delivering innovation and best practice. WY HCP also held six digital workshops with colleagues from  Bradford, Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield to develop and carry out plans to address the recommendations from the ‘PA Consulting Digital Maturity Assessment by place findings’.

GP Online Consultation: Increasing audience insight and engagement with patients and practices.

• Published a report summarising engagement and audience insight activities carried out over the previous year and before the lockdown period
• 99% of practices using GP online consultation. WY HCP produced an animation to help encourage patients to use the online form available on GP websites should they want to. Using the online form can free up busy telephone lines for people who don’t want to or who can’t use digital. The animation is available in community languages
• the Partnership worked with GP practices and sent supporting materials to encourage the use of online consultation systems in a way that delivers benefits for both patients and practices. Working together we showed how a few simple tweaks to processes can improve effectiveness and efficiencies. Have a look at our GP online consultation pages for more information including questions and answers.

Yorkshire and Humber Care Record: Engagement focusing on identified priority areas including maternity data sharing to further improve care.

One of our priorities is to increase data sharing across our associated health and care organisations through the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR). This includes a project with hospital trusts using YHCR technology to share a summary of maternity data between each organisation.

The Partnership engaged with maternity stakeholders to look at current ways of working together with the potential benefits of sharing maternity data reports. In summary to:

• Save clinical time chasing information where care crosses organisations
• Improve information sharing and support patient choice
• Add to the richness and value of the record
• Based on assets created by the YHCR so reduce the burden on individual trusts

Engagement fed into communication activities including conversations at place based digital maturity workshops carried out with Bradford, Calderdale, Leeds, Harrogate, Kirklees, and Wakefield. There was research with digital midwives around the numbers of women currently accessing out of area maternity services as well as meetings with trusts to look at workflows and the way they use systems. Demonstrations also took place to show how the summary record would work in practice.

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Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub: An in-person event for 100 people was organised to promote the Critical Incident Staff Support Pathway (CrISSP). The event was attended by people from across West Yorkshire who are part of the trained CrISSP facilitator cohort and facilitated by our consultant clinical psychologists. Attendees heard from national and international experts in the field, they took part in workshops and enhanced their learning.

Harnessing the Power of Communities Programme (HPoC): Showcase event, March 28 to 1 April 2022 to celebrate the positive impact on health outcomes of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE), working in partnership with health and social care organisations in West Yorkshire. Throughout the VCSE Power week, resources from videos, podcasts, blogs, case studies and infographics were available to share and celebrate the diverse and often life changing work of our VCSE in West Yorkshire. With a focus on a specific theme with one from each of the five local places which make up West Yorkshire, VSCE Power showcase covered:

• Day 1: Our unique selling point, reaching marginalised communities. Place focus: Bradford District and Craven
• Day 2: Co-designing social prescribing pathways and personalised care. Place focus: Calderdale
• Day 3: Early help on the ground. Place focus: Kirklees
• Day 4: Volunteering (a win-win). Place focus: Leeds
• Day 5: Our long track record and specialist support.: Place focus: Wakefield - register for our live event on Eventbrite

Harnessing the Power of Diversity Event, July 2022: Our #VCSEPower event showcased the amazing work and impact of the voluntary community social enterprise (VCSE) working in partnership with health and social care organisations in West Yorkshire around diversity, ethnic minorities and race equality.  WY HCP invited sector colleagues and organisations from across the health and care system working with diverse communities across the region to our online launch event. This event was the start of a programme of work to explore how we can empower VCSE partners working with our diverse communities to be equals within the Partnership.

West Yorkshire Children, Young People and Families Diabetes Group host one of the first integrated care system level transitions event with over 50 representatives from across West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trust and other partners to:

• Learn and inform the developments of the NHS England National Framework for Transition
• Learn and be empowered to connect with the Burdett National Transition Nursing Network
• Share good practice and how diabetes transitions currently feels across each acute hospital trust
• Identified actions locally, shared principles as an Integrated Care System for Diabetes Transitions and inform national direction

Over three days we launched our West Yorkshire Health Inequalities Academy - a collaborative approach to closing the health and wellbeing gap across West Yorkshire. One year on, and we hosted a celebratory event bringing partners together to explore progress to date, share learning, and outline our continued approach toward tackling health inequalities. Both events involved around 1,000 colleagues from across West Yorkshire and beyond.

Climate change lunch and learn sessions were open to all and covered many aspects of sustainability in healthcare both clinical and non-clinical. They were very well received by people across the whole country and we are now in our second series.

Respiratory lunch and learn sessions for GPs and other clinicians.

Over 600 people joined our second annual Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Knowledge Exchange in partnership with the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit on 26 to 28 April 2022.  With a focus on prevention, early intervention, and mitigating harm from preconceptions throughout life, the event showcased the amazing work that is taking place across our system.

• Representation at West Yorkshire Joint Health and Overview Scrutiny Committee for key areas of work
• Tri-monthly MP briefing and updates
• Developed parliamentary briefings on request, for example on health inequalities and number of people waiting for treatment
• Round table conversations with the West Yorkshire Mayor and regular updates
• Bi-monthly meetings with Area Partnership Group (unions) on workforce areas
• Monthly meetings with West Yorkshire Healthwatch CEOs
• Take part in meetings held in public with West Yorkshire Joint Health Overview Scrutiny Committee
• Provide information to local health and wellbeing boards and involve them in the development of work, such as refreshed five-year plan.

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There were over 200 published articles from 1 September 2021 to end of July 2022 - including national, regional, local press and TV. 

In 2021/22 we achieved a fourth consecutive year of growth of the Partnership's digital channels with:

• 6.9 million impressions on Twitter (up 13%)
• Over 100,000 unique visits to the Partnership website (up 5.25%)
• Over 50,000 views on our YouTube channel (up 82%) from 210 published videos. We also gained 258 new subscribers (a 300%+ increase)
• Our podcasts listened to 1,896 times on Soundcloud
• 17,880 views of our weekly news update on Microsoft Sway
• The last year also saw the production of new websites for suicide prevention, staff mental health and wellbeing, a refresh of the Workforce website and both a website and staff extranet for the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board.