Last week, Sam Keighley, VCSE Sector Lead in the Health and Care System, and Kerrie-lee Barr, Development Director at the VCS Alliance, visited all of our Bradford District and Craven localities. This is Craven, Bradford West, Bradford South, Bradford East, Keighley, and Shipley.
These visits began conversations about the seismic changes currently taking place in the Health and Care System, what that means for us and how we might need to organise ourselves even more collaboratively going forward.
Firstly, we’d like to thank everyone who attended these sessions and shared their time and thoughts with us. Kerrie-Lee and Sam talked and listened to nearly 100 people, and even one emotional support kitten-in-training (yes, really!).
For those of you who couldn’t join us, we hope this post gives you a sense of what we covered and how the sessions went. We’re planning to hold online sessions in the next few weeks and there is still time to contribute your thoughts — details will follow soon. We’ll also be taking the conversation to the next REN Network meeting, Mental Health Provider Forum, and Young Lives Forum.
Here’s what you need to know in the meantime…
As the Health and Care System continues to face financial pressures, all Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), including the West Yorkshire ICB, must reduce costs by around 50%. Local NHS trusts also have to make significant cuts. Currently, around 1,200 people are employed across the West Yorkshire ICB, and this is expected to reduce to around 300. This will significantly change what the ICB can do and specifically how it commissions services. There is a great deal of uncertainty about what the restructure will look like—this is expected to become clearer in September—and what impact it will have on commissioning.
It is expected that the ICB will move towards strategic commissioning at a West Yorkshire level. While the details are still unclear, here’s what we do know:
In our presentation, we shared the emerging structure of the new Bradford District and Craven governance strategy for health and care.
A key part of this structure, which we focused on in our session, is the development of Integrated Neighbourhood Health and Care Teams. These teams are part of the new governance framework and will provide a space where the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector can be equal partners in multi-disciplinary networks, be part of the solution, share data and insights, and highlight challenges. The VCSE sector will need to propose a VCSE Lead for each locality to join their Neighbourhood team.
These Neighbourhood Teams will formalise and recognise the kind of local partnership work that, particularly, the VCSE sector and Primary Care, are already doing. The teams will be made up of representatives from the local Primary Care Network and other stakeholders in each area.
As part of the strategic commissioning shift, the VCSE sector will need to act quickly to become commissioning-ready in this new environment, and to get into position in the Neighbourhood Health teams to influence decision-making.
So, how do we do that?
· How do we make sure our VCSE representatives in the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams are truly representing your locality?
· How do we collaborate and sustain our local collaboration and connectivity moving forward, and how can we formalise this in our areas?
· And how do we build on the strengths that already exist in our localities, making sure our knowledge and experience of working in this way contribute to the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams?
We’ll explore these questions and more in our upcoming online sessions and at the Forums, as well as share more about how the VCSA can facilitate the participatory selection of a VCSE representative for your locality. It’s important to note here that the VCSA has secured funding for these VCSE Lead positions (one-day a week expectation to the equivalent of a day’s Chief Exec. salary), and it is not expected that any organisation or person will take on this representative work unremunerated.
If you have any questions, ideas, or would like to register your interest to join our next conversations where we can share much more information around this emerging work, please email: info@thevcsalliance.org.uk
