The first blog of 2020 comes from Professor Stephen Eames, Independent Chair for the Humber, Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership
Welcome to my new weekly blog which aims to inform you about and promote the activities of the Humber, Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership. I am also keen to celebrate the fantastic work of our staff and our teams, many of whom go beyond the call of duty every day.
On that note, I really want to thank all of our frontline staff and supporting teams and services who are working tirelessly in the face of unprecedented pressures on NHS and social care services across our region. I know from my own experience of the last few months that many staff whether in hospital, community, mental health, primary or social care going beyond normal expectations to ensure that the needs of our patients and clients are met. In the Partnership, we are doing everything possible to support our services across North Yorkshire and the Humber.
In this first blog I thought it might be helpful to remind you what the Humber, Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership is and what it is aiming to do.
In a nutshell, the Partnership is a collaboration between health, local government and voluntary sector organisations which believe that, through working together, we can better improve the lives and health and wellbeing of the 1.4 million people we collectively serve in the Vale of York, Scarborough and Ryedale, East Riding of Yorkshire, Hull, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.
Our main purpose is to create an environment where people can start their lives well, live well and age well. We aim to do this by transforming the way we do things by joining up services across and between institutions and making them more accessible to local people and communities. In particular we are keen to encourage the development of more services out of hospital and closer to where people live.
We are also focussed on improving and investing in mental health, cancer and primary care.
Most importantly, through integrating health and care services, the use of information, new technologies and through engaging with the civic activities of local government, and in particular through our 29 new Primary Care Networks, we want to really concentrate our efforts on helping people and communities to improve their health, change their lifestyles and prevent ill health and health inequalities.
We intend to realise this ambition by developing an approach that combines our collective strength to lever changes in the health of our population so that there are better outcomes in the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the people we serve. This will mean joining together our plans in the NHS for improving health with local government plans for education, housing, economic development, community safety and other important areas in order to make a positive difference to people’s lives.
This week, the Partnership received national attention for the work we are doing to transform the way in which we care for pregnant women.
Baroness Julia Cumberlege CBE, who chaired the major NHS review of maternity services which led to the publication of the Better Births report in 2016, this week visited Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to see first-hand some of the changes that are taking place in maternity services in our region. She met with members of the Ivy, Primrose, Willow and Linnea teams of midwives to learn about their work to support women and their families in the Hull and East Riding parts of our patch.
Feedback from women supported by the new Continuity of Carer teams tells us they feel more able to build good relationships with their midwife, which benefits both the woman and the baby.
Continuity of carer models have also been introduced in York Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, improving the experiences of women across our region.
I hope you have found this blog useful and informative. I would really welcome any feedback and/or suggestions on things to feature in future blogs or any other ideas or thoughts you may have.
I wish everyone a Happy New Year.