Dear [First Name] 

Welcome to the West Yorkshire Voice Newsletter. 

In each newsletter, we tell you about what is happening and ways to share your experiences and ideas to help improve health and care services across West Yorkshire. We will also update you about where we have shared your feedback and where we are seeing changes happening.

Thank you for reading this newsletter. If you need anything in a different format, please contact us. 

Click the links below to skip to sections you want to read. You can click the 'back to top' button at the end of each section to return to the contents. 

In our March newsletter, we shared an update about the recent event that was held about improving End of Life Care in West Yorkshire.

The End of Life Care Health Needs Assessment that was influenced by the Healthwatch End of Life report has now been published. A health needs assessment is a way to understand the health problems and unmet needs of a population and helps to plan and deliver services to address those needs.

What did we do?

From February to March this year, Healthwatch across West Yorkshire wrote a report that summarised people’s experiences of health and care services before, during and after pregnancy. This report brought together feedback from a range of sources such as what has been heard by Maternity Voices Partnerships in each area. The report focuses on people who are more likely to experience health inequalities that can happen when people, for whatever reason, do not have fair access to health and care services.

What was the impact?

On 18th March, Healthwatch across West Yorkshire presented this at the March board meeting of the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board. The report was received really well in terms of showing the reality for people when accessing maternity services. 

We also shared the report at one of the Leeds meetings of the Integrated Care Board, the Quality and Patient Experience Committee. We heard that the report is already having impact with Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust using it at their maternity improvement board to check they are taking the right actions to improve the experience of people in Leeds. They have also asked to have representation from Healthwatch on this board to help them do this. Leeds Health and Care academy have also committed to using it to help inform their project looking at gaps in training provision for the health and care workforce.

There was also discussion around using the report to work with GP practices around making sure it is easy for people to access their first midwife appointment and improving opportunities for GPs and other health professionals to make sure people get the right help with their mental health before, during and after pregnancy.

What next?

West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board has committed to a session next week when they will look at the recommendations from all of our reports from the last year, what work is already happening and what needs to happen to address the consistent themes that people have raised.

We regularly share ways you can get involved in sharing your experiences, your feedback and have your voice heard at a West Yorkshire level. We share these on these newsletters and social media as well as on our noticeboard.

What and why?

Yorkshire Ambulance Service has an established Patient Voice group called the Critical Friends Network (CFN). This aims to improve local ambulance services.

Engagement events and meetings are held throughout the year (as a minimum quarterly) and are held in different areas of the region to make sure it is accessible for all members. 

Who?

Support offered: 

Travel expenses will be paid for any events that the CFN members attend, and refreshments will also be provided. Yorkshire Ambulance Service is proud of our Investing in Volunteers accreditation and the support we offer to our volunteers. 

How to get involved?

If you would like further information or an application form to join the CFN please contact us at yas.patientexperience@nhs.net

What and why?

West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership are working to better understand the experiences of people with lived experience of obesity, alongside the perspectives of the healthcare professionals involved in providing support.

They are asking people to complete a survey and/ or be involved in some online focus groups.

Who?

They would like to hear from people in West Yorkshire who:

How to get involved:

1. Professionals can fill in a survey about their experiences of supporting people living with obesity. This takes around 8-10 minutes.

2. People living with obesity can fill in a survey about their own experiences or attend an online focus group session about living with obesity on 30th April, 1st May, 6th May or 7th May.

More details and the times are available on the website. 

Support and recognition:

What and why?

The NHS wants to hear from local people about birth choices in Wakefield District.

A public consultation is running on the future of birthing services at Pontefract Hospital, where births have been temporarily suspended since 2019. The proposal is to not reinstate births at Pontefract while continuing to provide antenatal and postnatal care there.

Local people would still have access to all four birth choices in the district, including home birth, midwife-led units, and consultant-led care.

Who?

Anyone living in Wakefield District, but they would particularly like to hear from people:

How to get involved:

The deadline for being involved is Sunday 18 May 2025.

What and why?

Stacey from the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance wants to hear about people’s experiences of Cancer Care Reviews (CCRs).

This will help them with their work on developing the support available in the community for cancer patients, carers, and their family members. Cancer Care Reviews are important for connecting patients to the support they need, which will help with moving more care from hospitals to community.

Who?

They would like to hear from people:

How to get involved:

Fill in a short survey by clicking the link on the green button below. 

More information and support:

If you require further information, or have any questions, please contact Stacey on stacey.wadsworth1@nhs.net or Lauren on lauren@yorkshirecancercommunity.co.uk

New membership

In December 2024, we recruited for new members to join the Steering Group for West Yorkshire Voice. We had lots of great expressions of interest and were able to recruit 8 new members to join. We will be sharing information about our new members in the coming months in our newsletter.

What is the steering group?

The aim of the Steering Group is to help us make sure that West Yorkshire Voice meets the needs of local people of West Yorkshire. They help to steer our work by providing helpful challenge, as well as bringing new ideas to our work. They offer advice and ideas from both personal experience and from their voluntary and professional work with local communities.

What has the Steering Group been up to?

We have had two fantastic meetings so far with great conversations about how the group can be more involved in holding the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board directly to account.

We also talked about how the Integrated Care Board and the way that the NHS is structured can be explained to people as it can be a confusing system.

Here, we have shared services and resources that are aimed at supporting fair access to health and care (addressing health inequalities).

Neurodivergent people, who were involved in influencing the work of the West Yorkshire Neurodiversity Programme, identified that people need better information about how to understand and ‘Right to Choose’. This is also something we also heard through conversations with West Yorkshire Voice in our Life on Hold Report.

During the coproduction project, neurodivergent individuals have helped to produce guidance on ‘Right to Choose’ informed by their own experiences. They hope this will help people to better understand and navigate this process when going through the diagnosis process.

Here are the ways you can get information from us:

We regularly share information about opportunities to share your experiences and ideas and help make changes to health and care services. We also give updates about what things are changing because of feedback we have heard.

Here are the ways you can get information from us:

You can also contact us any time to share your views and experiences or get support with joining an opportunity.

Thank you [First Name]  for taking the time to read this newsletter. We welcome any feedback about how we can make this information more accessible and useful to you. 

We can also share your involvement opportunities, work and updates in our newsletter so please speak to us if you'd like to be included in a future edition.

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