Better health, better lives

Our ambition

We will help people from all backgrounds to lead long, happy and productive lives by improving their health and socio-economic wellbeing.

We will strive to provide personalised health and care services to support quality of life at every stage. We will transform how services are delivered with a digital-first, citizen-centred approach.

We will intervene when necessary to keep our children safe and ensure that residents in need can access services to maintain dignity and independence. We will continue to work with our partners in health, police and the community on to keep vulnerable children and adults safe and secure.

Our context

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on health and social care provision. It has meant that services and resources focused on self-care, prevention and early intervention to reduce demand on public services have had to be shifted to manage the pandemic.

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected those facing financial hardship and vulnerable people in our communities, as well as people from BAME groups, widening health inequalities.

The gap between the most deprived and least deprived remains large and will require sustained effort and targeted investment in the most deprived communities and neighbourhoods.

We will need to move resources and investment towards prevention and early intervention activities and make sure allocation is based on need. This will help citizens make long-term positive behaviour changes to improve their health and wellbeing.

Addressing historic health and wellbeing inequalities will require a collective, whole system effort from all partners within the district’s health and social care system. It is vital that common areas of need – or interdependencies – across the system are identified and that resources are used to complement and add value.

We recognise the challenges made by Ofsted in 2018 about the quality of children’s social care services. We are currently working through our plan to improve children’s social care services and aim to be out of special measures by 2024.

Our priorities

Living with COVID-19

We will:

  • Make sure robust control measures are in place to reduce infection rates and prevent future outbreaks of COVID-19, including Test and Trace, information, advice and guidance for residents and service providers, and we will respond to COVID-19 outbreaks swiftly and effectively.
  • Ensure timely interpretation and localised implementation of national guidance to ensure our plans and approach continue to protect and support residents.
  • Maintain provision and support to meet the health and wellbeing needs of all adults and children, while ensuring the most vulnerable and high risk groups are prioritised.
  • Use our learning and experience from COVID-19 to accelerate our transformation plans to redesign services to continue our support for communities to help themselves and each other. This will improve outcomes for individuals and families and avoid increased demand on statutory services.

Building a Better Future

We will:

  • Use a targeted approach to reduce health and socio-economic inequalities by providing support to our service users that is appropriate to their needs and culture and focusing on interventions to improve air quality, reduce obesity and improve physical activity levels.
  • Work with partners including education providers, NHS, the police and the voluntary and social sectors to move budgets to prevention and early intervention for all ages. As part of this work, we will deliver a prevention and early help offer for families to support children from conception to five years.
  • Improve self-care and personalisation services for adult social care and tailor support to the longterm health and wellbeing needs of individuals.
  • Transform how services are delivered with a digital-first, citizen-centred approach. Our services will remain accessible to all those for whom using digital channels will never meet their needs.
  • Work closely with our partners across the health and social care system to ensure that resources are pooled, prioritised and channelled to address shared outcomes. This is being enacted through the ‘Act as One’ strategy and formalised through a Section 75 agreement with the NHS.
  • Improve the mental wellbeing and resilience of adults and children through our partnership approach to prevention and early intervention with education providers, NHS, the police and the voluntary and social sectors.
  • Strive to make sure that all children are safe. We will prevent and reduce the impact of adverse childhood experiences. We will achieve an improved Ofsted assessment for our children’s services.
  • Support the protection and welfare of vulnerable children, including providing specialist advice and representation to assist Children’s Social Care in achieving their improvement goals following the Ofsted inspection in September 2018.
  • Continue to support the continuation of the innovative approach within the Family Court in West Yorkshire.

How will we measure success:

  1. Increase the years of healthy life expectancy (at birth) in both males and females and close the gap with the national average (shared target with Better Skills, More Good Jobs and a Growing Economy)
  2. Reduce levels of childhood obesity.
  3. Increase levels of physically active adults and close the gap with the national average.
  4. Bring percentage of referrals to Children’s Social Care in the year which were within 12 months of previous referral closing in line with our statistical neighbours.
  5. Reduce percentage of children in care with three or more placements during the previous year in line with our statistical neighbours.
  6. Improve the emotional wellbeing of Children in Care.
  7. People with learning disabilities in settled accommodation. To move up one quartile based on 2018-19 published national data (Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) data).
  8. Percentage of adults who have a learning disability in paid employment. To move up one quartile based on 2018-19 published national data (ASCOF data).
  9. Maintain the 2019-20 performance of 555 per 100,000 population (or below) permanent 65+ admissions to residential and nursing homes.

The underpinning plans and strategies that will enable us to deliver on this priority include:

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