Agenda item

The report of #TeamLeeds Health and Care People’s Voices Group (PVG) provided an outline of the key themes that people have raised with health and care organisations in the city.  The report calls for citywide commitment to act on the consistent messages from people, and to do that in co-production with the people of Leeds to target future engagement.

The purpose of the report of Team Leeds Health and the Care People’s Voices Group was threefold:

1.  To ask the Board to ensure the new collaborative involvement culture that our PVG has fostered through its workstreams is core to our developing local integrated arrangements; mandated under forthcoming legislation. This approach is rooted in listening to people and hearing the voices of those facing the greatest health inequalities.

2.  To set out key themes which have emerged from the recent Big Leeds Chat and other people’s voices work; and to invite the Board to agree how the governance to ensure that action is taken against each of the themes.

3.  Paper notes system commitments made on two areas where we have heard consistent feedback from people: communication and inequalities.

Hannah Davies, Healthwatch Leeds and Pip Goff, Forum Central gave the Board a presentation.

Key issues highlighted included the following:

·  The need to have people’s voices at the centre of health and wellbeing decision making.

·  Moving from collective listening to collective action.

·  Focus on involving people with greatest health inequalities.

·  Connecting involvement to decision making.

·  Working together -

·  A shared city wide workplan – bringing people together and decision making.

·  Local people’s voices to be heard in Local Care Partnerships.

·  The voice of staff was also essential.

·  The role of people’s voices in governance.

·  Use of Healthwatch and 3^rd Sector experience and involvement.

·  Listening to action – allocation of themes to forums;  reporting back to Health and Wellbeing Board; reporting back to public including through the Annual Health and Wellbeing Report.

·  The need for communication, co-ordination and compassion.

·  Use of plain English and making communication available to all including digitally excluded.

·  Actions needed to address health inequalities.

Further discussion included the following:

·  A suggestion that communication be brought as a future agenda item for the Board.

·  It was right to use the various forums and their expertise but it was essential that there were arrangements for reporting back.

·  Ways of measuring the communication process.  These included using people’s experiences, complaints and casework reviews.  Systematic metrics were being developed which could also provide information.  Further examples were given including the success of communication during the vaccination programme.

·  How involved people were with regards to their own care and the understanding of their care.

·  The Allyship Programme and Reaching out to more marginalised people – the need to provide feedback from the programme.

RESOLVED –

1.  HWB is asked to support the workstreams recommended by PVG and to help shape our citywide involvement culture by:

·  Receiving regular updates on the PVG’s work

·  Support and endorse progress within its various workstreams

·  Note and support the progress in embedding people’s voices into future system governance

2.  HWB is asked to take action on the insight gathered through the Big Leeds Chat by:

·  Using the insight to directly inform and influence the refresh of the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Strategy (LHWS) and the developing Best City Ambition

·  Provide the public with direct feedback around the actions and work taken on each of the insight’s themes

·  For each theme, allocate a lead forum and ask it to report back to the HWB on a regular basis on progress

3.  Organisations represented at the HWB are asked to:

·  Take the commitment made at the HWB into organisations

·  To support and champion Board actions within represented organisations and in partnership on a citywide basis.