What is the Wakefield District Health and Care Partnership?

We are the NHS, the council, health, care and housing organisations and the voluntary sector working together across the Wakefield district and West Yorkshire.

We work to make sure that the right health and care services are in place for our residents and we also work to improve health and care services in the long term.

We play a key role in delivering the Wakefield Health and Wellbeing Strategy, including working to prevent ill health and reduce health inequalities.

There have been different ways that health and care has been organised over the years but our aims and priorities remain the same – we will continue to secure and improve health and care services for our residents and work to reduce health inequalities.

We want people to start well, live well and age well.

The health of people in Wakefield district

• we are living longer with more illness than ever before
• people living in the most well-off areas of the district on average live eight years longer than those living in the poorest areas
• cancer and cardiovascular disease are increasing in people aged over 75
• less than half of new-born babies are breast fed
• childhood obesity is rising faster than elsewhere in the country in all age groups
• more than half of children are growing up in low-income households
• one in five adults are smokers
• one in every hundred hospital admissions is related to substance misuse
• one in three people live with a mental illness
• air pollution kills over 150 people every year

You can find out more information about the health and wellbeing needs of our local population in the Wakefield Joint Needs Assessment (JSNA).

What have people told us about their experiences of health and care services?

Local people have told us that they have concerns about:

• getting an appointment with a GP
• being able to register with an NHS dentist
• mental health support for adults and children
• waiting lists and delays for treatment or care
• being excluded by online or digital services
• experiencing care that is not joined up or coordinated

You can read more about what people have told us is important to them in our engagement and consultation reports.

Where do we want to be?

We have three core aims to help local people live healthier, happier lives:

• We want to provide health and care services that are personalised, accessible and timely
• We want more health and care services to be provided at home or close to home
• We want people in Wakefield district live in communities where they are supported to stay well

What we are working on right now

This year (2023-2024) we are working on a number of priorities that we believe will help us begin to address the things that local people have told us matter most to them:

Waiting lists and making sure you can access the service you need:

• We will put the right support in place for children who are neuro-diverse. This support will not rely on a diagnosis
• We will deliver an integrated emotional and mental wellbeing pathway for children and young people
• We will work towards making it easier to get a course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for those who would benefit from it
• We will continue to work hard to reduce the length of time people have to wait for treatment in A&E
• We will get rid of the long waits that people are currently experiencing for planned treatment
• We will recruit more GPs to work in Wakefield district
• We will increase the number of appointments available in GP practices
• We will increase opportunities for career progression and skills development within social care staff groups
• We will work across West Yorkshire to improve access to dentists and dental services
• We will pilot a ‘digital health hub’ for people to access online services and increase their digital skills. We will also loan digital equipment to the most vulnerable.

Improving experience

• We will improve people’s experience of being discharged from hospital by making sure this works better and faster. This will involve different parts of the health and care system working together more effectively
• We will provide more urgent services in your own home, reducing the need for people to attend A&E
• We will increase the number of people who die in their preferred place – for most people this is not hospital

 Preventing ill health and supporting independence

• We will support the most vulnerable in our population by making sure that voluntary and community organisations can focus on local needs
• We will support more people raising families through community Family Hubs
• We will support more people to quit smoking whilst pregnant
• We will increase the number of people with serious mental illness and learning disabilities who receive their NHS Healthcheck
• We will help people to recognise the risks of cardiovascular disease (conditions affecting the heart and blood vessels) and support them to reduce those risks
• We will use assistive technology to help people to live independently
• We will provide extra care housing schemes to support people to live independently
• We will increase the number of people living with a long-term health condition who have a personalised care and support plan

What we are working on in the longer term:

As well as as improving health and care services for people right now, an important part of our role is to create the health and care system that we will need in the future – one that can meet the needs of our growing population.

To work towards this we are making these long term commitments:

• We will do more to prevent ill health. This will include supporting people to start well and live well through building healthy and thriving communities and promoting independence and healthier lifestyles. Through new ways of working with data in the future we will also be able to better identify people who could be at risk of ill health and work with them to anticipate and prevent this.

• Health inequalities are unfair differences in the health between different groups of people. We will work together as a partnership to make sure that the right focus and resources are in place for those most at risk, and support the wider local health and wellbeing aims to tackle underlying poverty and disadvantage.

• We will continue to make sure that health and care is joined up and well-coordinated. This will mean that people are much more able to maintain their independence and will have a much better experience of services. It will also mean that the whole system will be more efficient.

• We know that very often the best way to support you when you need health and care services is to do this in your own home, close to home or within your local community. The evidence shows that this can help people regain their independence and recover quicker. We are committed to providing more care within your home or in local community or health centres.

• We will continue to work in partnership with a range of health and care organisations in the Wakefield district and across West Yorkshire. This means that we can really make a difference, with individual organisations playing their part, towards our shared aims to improve population health.

If you would like a copy of the Partnership’s Strategic Delivery Plan 2023-2026,  please get in touch with us at:
wyicb-wak.communications@nhs.net

The Wakefield District Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2025 aims to help people across the district to live longer, healthier, happier lives.

The plan describes how organisations will work together with local communities to improve the health of the population overall, as well as closing the gap between the health of people in the most well-off areas of the district and people who live in poorer areas.

The strategy identifies four key overarching priority areas:

• A healthy standard of living for all
• A healthy start in life for every child
• Preventing ill-health
• Sustainable communities

The priorities are based on what local people have told us is important to them about what helps them stay well, as well as the detailed information about the district’s population from the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA).

Under the plan, local people will have more choice, control and support to live independently with less reliance on services. Where people do need support from services, health and care will be more joined up and organised around the needs and preferences of the individual, their carers and family.

Our areas of focus include supporting schemes that provide good quality, warm and affordable housing and address fuel poverty; helping more women to stop smoking when they are pregnant and improving access to mental health support for new mothers; enhanced support to the thousands of informal carers in the district, including children and young people, to enable them to continue the vital role they play in looking after family members and friends with disabilities or health conditions; and the creation of safer, more attractive and healthier places to live and improve green space in our city and town centres.

The Health and Wellbeing Board will oversee the development of detailed plans to take forward the priorities.

Progress so far

In July 2024, we published an update on the the steps that have been taken over the first two years of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2025.

Some of the highlights include:

• Citizens’ Advice staff based for one day a week in one of nine ‘Help at the Hub’ locations, have secured income gains worth £1.7 million for more than 1,500 local residents.
• Credit unions have been established in nine community outreach sites across the district, up to May 2024, helping people access loans of almost £30,000.
• The district has joined forces with Breaking Barriers Innovations (BBI) to develop a new approach to planning for employment, as well as looking at some of the common obstacles to people finding work, such as childcare and transport, and ways to overcome these.
• More than 1,700 families have been supported by family teams and 71 per cent of people questioned said they knew how to access support through family and youth hubs.
• An emotional wellbeing service was launched in April 2023 and there has been a gradual decline in the number of children and young people needing support from higher tier mental/emotional health services.
• There continues to be a strong partnership approach to reducing smoking during pregnancy and the latest data for smoking at time of delivery (SATOD) has reduced from 14.7 per cent to 11.3 per cent.
• Over 56,000 books have been delivered to over 1,815 eligible children as part of the Wakefield Dolly Parton Imagination Library book-gifting scheme that delivers one high quality book each month, building up a home library of books for children under five.
• A network of Blood Pressure Wellbeing Champions has been created as part of a pilot scheme which started at St George’s Community Centre in Lupset. These volunteers can now provide potentially life saving checks and advice in the community and organisations they work in.
• The Council and NHS are funding a Healthy and Sustainable Communities programme, focused in the ten most deprived communities in the district.  The first phase has been completed in four of the areas.
• In Airedale a new Community Connector has been appointed. The role will provide time and space to develop trusting relationships with people and connect them to local health and wellbeing services. A similar post is being introduced in South Kirkby.
• Citizen Coin is a digital app that has been launched in June 2024 to support volunteering in the Wakefield District which can be used free of charge by all partners. Citizen Coin enables partners to reward their volunteers with virtual currency for the time that they give doing amazing things.

You can read full details in the 2024 Health and Wellbeing Strategy annual report on our website. 

Previous updates on the strategy’s progress can be found below:

Read more about how our health and wellbeing plans are gathering pace.

Wakefield District Health and Care Partnership: our first year review

Our one year plan was developed following the new legislation for the NHS which was implemented in July 2022.

To achieve our aims, we outlined the programmes that our partnership would take forward during this year.

The purpose of this plan was to set out our vision for 2022-2023, and the priority programmes of work we chose to address collectively.

Read our 2022-2023 Partnership Plan (opens in PowerPoint)

Our 2022-23 Partnership Plan plain text version (opens in Word)

Our Adult Autism Strategy for the Wakefield district, which describes how we will deliver the vision for autistic people.

Wakefield District Health and Care Partnership works to improve the health and wellbeing of local people, by reducing health inequalities, providing continuity of care and improving our services. Our priorities, overseen by the Health and Wellbeing Board, are based on what we know makes the biggest difference to improving people’s health:

• Giving every child the best start in life
• A healthy standard of living for all
• Sustainable communities
• Preventing ill health

The Adult Autism Strategy encompasses these key priorities and embraces a partnership working approach to removing historical barriers that have prevented joined-up patient care across primary, community, mental health, social care and acute services. We are committed to applying these integrated care principles to the delivery of autism services for adults in Wakefield following a recent engagement highlighting that this is important to everyone.

Wakefield District Health and Care Partnership Adult Autism Strategy 2023-2025

Find out more about the work of the Wakefield Learning Disability and Autism Partnership Board

This webpage includes the Adult Learning Disability Plan for Wakefield 2022-2024.

Transformation Delivery Collaborative

The Transformation Delivery Collaborative (TDC) sees services from across Wakefield District come together to address short and long-term challenges facing the health and care system.

Representatives from the NHS, general practice, adult social care, children’s services and mental health are among those who are part of the TDC, which meets on a regular basis.

By doing so, they can understand and share challenges, pool knowledge and expertise and plan and deliver improvements to services collectively.

Children’s Alliance

The Children’s Alliance was established in June 2021. It is a population alliance that focuses on the experience of children and young people across their lives.

Members of the Children’s Alliance commission or provide services to children, young people and families and, by working together can agree how services are connected and wrapped around children and young people to provide the right help at the right time.

The work of the Children’s Alliance aims to support children and young people as early as possible when need arises and works on the best start in life offer, the emotional and mental wellbeing pathway and to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The health offer available in the District’s Family Hubs is growing – families can now access everything from paediatric clinics, stay and play, SEND support, emotional wellbeing and healthy eating groups. The Wakefield health and wellbeing offer is also well connected to education so that children can access support where they go to nursery and school.

Integrated Community Services

The programme aims are around prevention and keeping people well and independent in their own homes and managing resources effectively alongside improving the quality of our care in health and social care.

It embeds a ‘home first’ approach while improving the experience of those who use our services. The impact of the programme could see the number of people attending the emergency department who don’t need to be there reduced and the number of people returning home from hospital sooner increased.

Housing and Health

The programme is working with housing providers across Wakefield District. Housing is the foundation of many people’s health and, without it, much of the other support in place does not work.

The programme supports the prevention agenda, including falls prevention, and the homeless population whilst there is a host of independent living schemes.

The programme also works with Yorkshire Ambulance Service with the Carelink responder service and there are housing co-ordinators in Fieldhead and Pinderfields Hospitals who enable people to go home to a safe and supported environment.

Mental Health Alliance

The Wakefield Mental Health Alliance Partnership is a partnership of mental health providers and commissioners in Wakefield District.

The Alliance was formed in June 2018. The Mental Health Alliance has oversight of the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions for mental health and exists to improve mental health services for the population of Wakefield District.

Learning Disability and Neurodiversity Alliance

The Wakefield Learning Disability and Neurodiversity Alliance has oversight of the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions for Learning Disabilities, Autism and ADHD and supports the priorities in the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Strategy.

This includes the ambition to achieve a 10 per cent reduction in the gap in life expectancy between people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities and/or autism and the rest of the population.

Its purpose is to deliver joined-up and person-centred care across organisational boundaries, ensuring people don’t fall between gaps in services. Members of the Alliance will promote the voice of people with learning disabilities, autism and ADHD acting as champions to increase understanding, promote reasonable adjustments and reduce inequalities so that people with learning disabilities, autism and ADHD are able to live a full and fulfilling life.

Planned Care Transformation Programme

The Wakefield and North Kirklees Planned Care Alliance Forum is a whole Mid Yorkshire system group working in partnership to take ownership and drive the development of the Planned Care Redesign Programme, including both recovery and transformational change in the delivery of healthcare to deliver the best possible outcomes for people.

The Planned Care Redesign Programme will support collaborative, integrated and personalised care through its five-point strategy:

• Unified vision
• Enhanced interface
• Pathway innovation
• Creative tools
• Personalised care

The Alliance brings together partners and leads in local healthcare to supply oversight on the delivery of this aim for the population, with recognition of the need to continue to work in collaboration to support and transform GP, local hospital, and community services.

Unplanned Care Transformation Programme

The Unplanned Care Alliance is a partnership of Urgent and Emergency Care providers and commissioners across the Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust footprint including the Districts of Wakefield and North Kirklees.

The Alliance was formed in April 2024 and oversees Unplanned Care Transformation programmes including:

• Improving Accident and Emergency (A&E) waiting times to 78 per cent of patients being seen within four hours by March 2025 (national ambition)
• Improving category two ambulance response times to an average of 30 minutes across 2024/25 (national ambition)
• Redesign of urgent and emergency care in Wakefield District including services provided at the King Street Walk In centre
• Pathway review and transformation to facilitate smoother access to, and between, Urgent and Emergency Care services across the Districts.

Our programmes and alliances are underpinned and supported by a number of key enablers:

People Alliance 

Digital and Business Intelligence

Health Inequalities Community of Practice

Personalised Care Programme