The Chancellor on Wednesday announced that NHS services in England are to get extra money to help deal with the growing pressures with an immediate cash injection of £350m to help this winter. This will be followed by an additional £1.6bn next year on top of the £2.1bn rise that was already planned.

A consistent and coherent set of arguments on behalf of the services was put forward by all of the national players in the run up to the budget. The NHS Confederation marshalled representative bodies for the NHS, local government and patients; the think tanks’ joint analysis gave a persuasive argument of a recurrent £4bn shortfall (you can read the letter here) and Simon Stevens’ speech at NHS Providers’ conference challenged the Government to fund the service or accept that services could suffer.

The additional resources are always welcome. They may be necessary but not sufficient. This will depend on details of the allocation mechanisms to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), the requirements on CCGs on how the money is spent, the impact of pay awards and the way in which funds then flow through contracts with providers. Until this is clear we cannot know the impact on us. We will play this into the finance refresh we are due to sign off in the coming months.

The Budget also provides £3.5 billion of capital investment for estates transformation, and improvement and efficiency schemes, so that the NHS can locally deliver more integrated care for people and better meet demand.

£2.6 billion of this funding will be for STPs to deliver transformation schemes that improve their ability to meet demand for local care. The Government has allocated 10% of this funding to 12 of the highest quality schemes with the strongest potential to help STPs meet future demand and develop local clinical and financial accountability. The rest of the £2.6bn will be allocated in due course.

Our STP is one of the 12 to be successful. We will receive funding for the bid we put forward for Leeds Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Inpatient Unit scheme to provide a new specialist inpatient unit for young people.

This is really positive news and reflects our priority to invest and improve child and adolescent mental health services in the region. Alongside the “new models of care” work on specialist child and adolescent mental health services and our mental health work stream, this funding will help secure the right services for children and their families.

The announcements made reflect only 10% of the funding that has been announced across England.

We remain positive that other funding schemes will be successful in further announcements. Thanks to everyone who worked hard on all the bids and in particular our Directors of Finance and their teams. You can read more here.

Whilst on the theme of mental health, organisations from across our partnership have come together to adopt a ‘zero’ suicide philosophy, where every death by suicide is viewed as preventable. Mental health providers, ambulance, police and fire services, local councils, prison services and voluntary community organisations are coming together to make a real difference through what is an ambitious and practical plan. The plan, launched on Tuesday, sets out how we will reduce suicide by 10% across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate area, and by 75% in targeted areas. I’m very hopeful about the combined efforts to make a positive impact across our area.

Some people may have had enough of experts but we could not get enough of the expertise of Professor Louis Appleby, who champions’ suicide prevention, and Danny Sculthorpe a former rugby league star who has lived experience and now is a trustee of State of Mind. At the launch, Louis taught us much, including the scale of self harm in young women and suicide in men and what to do about both. Danny was clear that he had learned he was now “more of a real man” because he shared his feelings and looked out for others. At 6 foot 4 and 17 stones, I wasn’t going to argue!

Have a good weekend

Rob

What else has been happening this week?

Elective care and standardisation programme

The Elective Care and Standardisation Programme met this week. The programme is all about supporting people to make healthier choices, reducing variation and inconsistency in policy and practice. There are four work streams:

  • supporting healthy lifestyle choices
  • standardisation of clinical thresholds
  • outpatients (focusing on elective orthopaedics and ophthalmology)
  • changes to the way we prescribe medication.

Chaired by Matt Walsh, Chief Officer for Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) who is also the Senior Responsible Officer for the programme, members discussed the next steps of the work. This includes feedback from the Joint Committee of the 11 CCG meeting in public which took place on the 7 November. You can read the papers here

Local Maternity System Board

The local Maternity System Board met this week. It was chaired by Anne-Marie Henshaw, Associate Director of Nursing and Head of Midwifery, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust. The Board’s vision for maternity services is to improve safety for mum and baby, for services to be tailored for individual people, to improve choice and for care to be family friendly. Also, all staff working in maternity care should be supported to deliver care which is women centred. They should work in high performing teams and in organisations which develop them and are well led. Communication with all staff and the public was an important part of the agenda.

Carers Right Day – today

An important part of the way we work across WY&H is about the support we give to the 260,000 people who care for family and friends. This includes children and young people caring for parents with long-term health needs.

Many carers are ‘hidden’ i.e. providing the majority of care without support. Early help reduces carer breakdown, limits support needed over the long term and prevents further ill health. Supporting carers well so they have good health and wellbeing enables them to remain in work, benefiting their household income and local economy. All of which will be discussed at the first of a series of carers events on the 14 December in Wakefield.

Fatima Khan-Shah, WY&H lead for unpaid carers, explains more here and Barbara talks honestly and bravely about caring for her husband Paul here.