Our approach to involving people and communities
Since our West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership began in 2016, we have been committed to ensuring that our approach to involvement, in all forms, meets the needs of people living, working, caring, and volunteering in West Yorkshire. This includes ensuring people who access care remain at the centre of all planning and that all important decisions involve talking and listening to people delivering care or receiving services.
We believe that this approach informs the ambitions of our Partnership - to work in an open and transparent way with communities. Working with communities helps us to make sure we are making the right decisions. When everyone – individuals, communities, and health and care staff – come together to plan and improve services, more people from more communities will live longer, healthier lives.
It's important for everyone to understand how and where they can receive support from health and care services and what they can expect. Our aim is to reach all communities to make sure we provide the right services at the right time to people who need them.
This can only be achieved through active participation from staff, people, and communities. To do this we work at a West Yorkshire level, and importantly for the people living here, at a local level in Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield District.
Our public involvement duties
To reinforce the importance and positive impact of working with people and communities, NHS England, ICBs and Trusts all have legal duties to make arrangements to involve the public in their decision-making about NHS services.
The main duties on NHS bodies to make arrangements to involve the public are set out in the National Health Services Act 2006, as amended by the Health and Care Act 2022.
We are committed to transparent and meaningful involvement in our work. We want people to help us design, develop and improve services by sharing their views and experiences and we believe the people we listen to and involve need to reflect the communities we serve.
Everything we have developed is done taking a partnership approach. Involving and communicating with staff, partners, stakeholders, people and communities in planning, design and delivery is essential if we are to get this right. Many people are often not heard and to ensure our services/commissioning meets the needs of all people, we must work creatively and accessibly to reach those whose voices/views/opinions are not always sought.
To help do this we have developed an Involvement Framework (our strategy for working with people and communities) that sets out the ICB approach, how we work and our mechanisms to ensure involvement provides assurance that we are putting the people of West Yorkshire at the heart of everything we do. This is also available in an audio described presentation.
This framework is an important part of the ICB and Partnership’s Communications and Involvement Plan 2024/2025.
The Involvement Framework sets out our involvement principles which we strive to follow in our Partnership involvement activity. Our involvement principles are:
- We will make our involvement activities more accessible.
- We want to be inclusive, so we ask for help to make sure that we are. Across West Yorkshire, we will be fair to all.
- We communicate with clear, simple and meaningful messages that are open, honest, transparent and timely.
- We know that diversity is a strength, so we engage with communities to reach and target people. We work with voluntary and community groups, and local Healthwatch, to help us do this.
- We value and use your input, expertise and insight. We will tell you how your involvement has made a difference.
- We will plan and design with you and spend public money on what matters to you.
- We provide support to make involvement easier for everyone.
- We build relationships and keep in touch.
- We care. We listen. We act.
West Yorkshire ICB and the Partnership are always keen to evaluate the involvement work it does and ensure the systems in place are fit for purpose. Three examples of this are:
- Independent Involvement Review - July 2021
- NHS England's review of our Involvement Framework (our strategy for working with people and communities) - July 2022
- The Good Governance Institute's review of our governance and assurance around involvement - November 2022
All these reviews were undertaken at a point in time and action plans including the recommendations are in place. In line with section 14Z54 of the 2006 Act, we have made the following arrangements to consult with people and communities on our system plan:
a. To ensure that the plan reflects the views of local people, we will carry out involvement activities which may include surveys and focus groups.
b. This work sits alongside the Partnership’s annual involvement and consultation mapping report which sets out the work that has taken place in our local places and at West Yorkshire level over the past 12 months.
c. We will have regard to NHS Guidance on consultation and engagement. The ten principles set out by NHS England and our local principles also apply.
You can read our public assurance report for examples.
How we work with and listen to what people are telling us
The West Yorkshire Public Involvement Report 2023-24 describes how we have involved people and communities across West Yorkshire in the work of the partnership over the last year. People are supported to take part in our Board engagement sessions by Healthwatch colleagues offering different ways for people to tell their stories, supporting them in person, or through recorded story telling in different formats.
Over the last 10 years, Healthwatch across West Yorkshire (including Craven in North Yorkshire) have worked hard to alert NHS providers and commissioners to the significant gaps in dentistry services. You can read more in this report and read about what we are doing as part of the Dental Health Reference Group.
Briefing papers have been produced by Healthwatch across West Yorkshire to help bring people’s voices into conversations and decision making at the ICB meetings, these have focussed on:
- Access to primary care
- Winter Pressures and planning
- People’s experience of mental health support in West Yorkshire
- Access to NHS dentistry services.
We value and use people and communities’ input, expertise and insight. Our involvement work is used to inform the development of services, policy and decisions. The findings and impact are published our website. The insight gathered is used further, previous insight and intelligence is reviewed to inform the development of involvement plans. This makes sure we reduce duplication and improve our involvement practice refining our methods of gathering insight and reaching underserved and underrepresented communities. Our mapping reports can be found on our website. This includes some of the involvement and consultation work undertaken in 2023/2024 to support the refresh of this year’s Joint Forward Plan.
Our intention is to plan and design services with people and communities and to spend public money on what matters to them. Training to support people to be involved with us and understand what good looks like, for example our Engagement Champions in Calderdale with Calderdale Community and Voluntary (CVAC) and Community Voices in Kirklees and West Yorkshire Voice support this important area of work. We also use Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approaches, such our co-production training in Leeds.
In spring 2023, a Citizen’s Panel was established to help us review our work to date and for us to further understand the views of local communities. Local people were invited to register their interest in joining and local community organisations also helped identify people to take part. Participants in the panel were chosen to be broadly representative of the characteristics of our local population. The citizen panel process helped us to develop criteria for evaluating potential new locations and helped ensure that the final phase of involvement answered the concerns of local people.
Working with Healthwatch
A representative from Healthwatch is a member of each of the ICB Committees and acts as a critical friend, challenging appropriately and providing real-time intelligence from people across West Yorkshire, to influence decision making. Insight captured by local Healthwatch and via West Yorkshire Voice is used to escalate themes and risks to committee leads to help inform agenda setting for the meetings.
Using data and insight to inform communications
All our West Yorkshire campaigns are built from what people have told us. Examples include ‘Speak with a midwife’, ‘It’s a GP thing’, #Mums can quit smoking, Rightsizing – your home, your choice, suicide prevention, Seriously Resistant to raise awareness of antibiotic resistance and ‘Reasonable adjustments for people with learning disabilities’.
We only go out to undertake new involvement activity if there are gaps in the insight. This can be seen on the ‘Gathering insight’ section of our website.
Our Suicide Prevention Champions campaign encouraged everyone aged 18+ to sign up and learn how to break stigma and raise awareness, to help bring the suicide rate down in West Yorkshire. The campaign launched in August 2023 and has a current total of 310 Champions (January 2024).
Our Learning Disabilities Health and Care Champions project has been running continuously for four years and brings the expertise and lived experience of people with learning disabilities into the heart of our work, enabling us to benefit from their advice and recommendations. This is an approach supported by councils and NHS organisations. The project is funded by West Yorkshire ICB and hosted by Bradford Talking Media. Out of this partnership working with organisations and individuals with lived experience came the shared decision-making video that can be seen on YouTube. You can read their reports and watch videos produced by the Champions on their page on our website.
The NHS website My Planned Care was developed in response to feedback from NHS staff and people who access care, including the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership’s Planned Care Citizens’ Panel. Their feedback has been vital to the development of the website. In addition to waiting time information, My Planned Care includes helpful details about pain management, mental health, keeping healthy and accessing financial help, along with other local support options for patients whilst they wait. These are all themes raised by the Planned Care Citizens’ Panel and discussed in depth at panel meetings.
Alongside the existing advice available by visiting www.111.nhs.uk or calling NHS 111, the Healthier Together website provides information that should be the first point of call if parents and carers have concerns about their child. It also offers practical advice on whether a child should go to nursery or school if unwell, along with advice on keeping children safe, well and in good general health.
During the spike in Strep A infections in early 2023, the website proved to be an invaluable tool and over a two-day period over 4,083 users accessed critical advice that helped them feel confident in keeping their children healthy and well at home. Since 27 June 2023, there have been 157,731 web users, with 83% being returning users.