Our vision for West Yorkshire and Harrogate:
Places will be healthy; you will have the best start in life so you can live and age well and die in the place of their choosing.
- We will work to make sure you are not disadvantaged by where you live, your background or what you do.
- If you have a long term health condition you will be offered personalised support to self-care. This will include peer support, technology and communities of support from people like you.
- If you have multiple health conditions, you will be in a team with your GP, community care staff and social services working together. This will involve you, your family and carers, the NHS, social care and community organisations - working on what matters to you.
- If you need hospital care, it will usually mean that your local hospital, which will work closely with others, will give you the best care possible.
- Local hospitals will be supported by centres of excellence for services such as cancer, vascular, stroke and complex mental health. They will deliver world class care and push the boundaries of research and innovation.
- All of this will be planned and paid for once between the NHS, your local council and community organisations working together and removing artificial barriers-to-care.
- People and staff will be involved in the design, delivery and assurance of services so that everyone truly owns their healthcare.
Proud to be a Partnership
We are happy to be working together in our six places (Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield) and are proud to be part of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Partnership.
Our relationships are very important to us because we have the biggest impact when there is shared commitment by all. We do however, need to get better at talking with people about what they want and need. Together we want to stop doing things that don’t meet people’s physical or mental health needs, or make them feel any better. We need to rethink how we can continually improve and free up money to re-invest in our communities, where we know we can be far more effective in preventing people becoming unwell in the first place. There are some great examples in our Plan to show you what we mean by this.
We also want to make sure our staff are able to give their best, develop their talents and make West Yorkshire and Harrogate a great place to live and work.
Our story
This infographic sets out some of the progress we have made together:
The Partnership belongs to us all. One of our greatest strengths as a partnership is the full and equal involvement of councils, NHS organisations and a wide range of voluntary and community organisations. Everyone is valued and we want to ensure equitable opportunities for people living across our area.
Reaching further than ever before, we not only want to keep people safe and well, we want them to be happy too. Connecting people to places and local neighbourhood activities, working with communities to make healthier choices and breaking down feelings of loneliness or isolation that harm our health.
Making the most of every opportunity, we will embrace fully what our partners and communities have to offer, including new technology and new ideas, and how these can make a positive difference to what and how we work on them to improve people’s lives.
Why work together?
We know people’s lives are better when organisations that provide health and care work together, particularly at the times when people most need it. We know people’s lives are better when we plan for, and invest in, services that support mental and physical health at the same time.
We also know that sharing good ways of working makes the money go further, creates the best use of staff expertise and increases the quality of what we all provide.
Most importantly, by working together, we will have the chance to create the conditions so that children get the best start in life and everyone’s chance of living a long, healthy life improves.
We are connectors
Our ambition is to join things up locally and at a West Yorkshire and Harrogate level, to connect organisations and individuals in ways that make better care easier - whether this is support delivered by local groups, services delivered in people’s own homes or the treatment that is best provided in a hospital.
We have a tremendous opportunity in West Yorkshire and Harrogate to make better connections to use our unique assets as an economy to improve health and wellbeing and contribute to inclusive economic growth.
Health and care is more than services
We know that most of what keeps you healthy and well is a wider set of factors than traditional health and care services. They include the house you live in, how warm it is, whether you feel isolated or alone, whether you experience poverty, the food you eat every day, how mobile and independent you are, whether you have a job and have access to parks and open spaces.
And so, we recognise that if we want to improve everyone’s health, we will have to target those factors that cause some people to experience significantly worse health – because of where, or how they live.
We are challenging traditional ways of working so we see the whole needs of people, what factors are causing or exacerbating their ill-health and what will help them to get well and stay well long term.
We truly believe that working with all partners across all sectors, listening to people, asking them what they want and acting on what works for them is a great place to start.
10 of our big ambitions
1. We will increase the years of life that people live in good health in West Yorkshire and Harrogate compared to the rest of England. We will reduce the gap in life expectancy by 5% (six months of life for men and five months of life for women) between the people living in our most deprived communities compared with the least deprived communities by 2024.
2. We will achieve a 10% reduction in the gap in life expectancy between people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities and/or autism and the rest of the population by 2024 (approx 220,000 people). In doing this we will focus on early support for children and young people.
3. We will address the health inequality gap for children living in households with the lowest incomes. This will be central for our approach to improving outcomes by 2024. This will include halting the trend in childhood obesity, including those children living in poverty.
4. By 2024 we will have increased our early diagnosis rates for cancer, ensuring at least 1,000 more people will have the chance of curative treatment.
5. We will reduce suicide by 10% across West Yorkshire and Harrogate by 2020/21 and achieve a 75% reduction in targeted areas by 2022.
6. We will achieve at least a 10% reduction in anti-microbial resistance infections by 2024 by, for example, reducing antibiotic use by 15%.
7. We will achieve a 50% reduction in stillbirths, neonatal deaths, brain injuries and a reduction in maternal morbidity and mortality by 2025.
8. We will have a more diverse leadership that better reflects the broad range of talent in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, helping to ensure that the poor experiences in the workplace that are particularly high for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff will become a thing of the past.
9. We aspire to become a global leader in responding to the climate emergency through increased mitigation, investment and culture change throughout our system.
10. We will strengthen local economic growth by reducing health inequalities and improving skills, increasing productivity and the earning power of people and our region as a whole.
Working in partnership with people and communities
We know that hospitals and healthcare professionals are not alone in keeping people well. Where people live, their homes, the community environment, family support and the life choices they can make are vital.
‘I’ statements
We've worked with Healthwatch to produce a series of 'I' statements which will inform how we work.
I care about the NHS.- Listen to me.
- Care about me and respect me.
- See me as a whole person.
- Support me to stay healthy and look after myself.
- Be there for me when I need support with my health and don’t keep me waiting.
- Encourage and assist me to use digital technology but don’t let that replace all human contact.
- Share my information with each other and work together to deliver my care.
- Understand that if I have a mental health condition, autism or/and a learning disability, I am more likely to be having a poorer care experience.
- Understand that if I am from a Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, I may face more barriers to understanding what’s available to me and how to access it.
- Look after the people who care for me.
Download the five year plan 'I' statements
Read more about how we are working in partnership with people, with communities, and with health and care staff, in Chapter 1 of the five year plan.
Further reading
You may also find the following information helpful:
- The NHS Long Term Plan
- Local Government Association (LGA): The LGA and the Social Care Institute for Excellence have joined up to produce an accessible and practice resource that supports local systems in fulfilling their ambition of integration.
- NHS England: Integrated Care Systems
- The Kings Fund: Making sense of integrated care systems, integrated care partnerships and accountable care organisations.
- LGA: Development of Primary Care Networks – LGA Briefing.