Communications and involvement report (January – February 2022)

A summary of our recent communications and involvement activity.

Media coverage

We are continuing to see that our proactive media releases championing the vaccination programme, healthy lifestyle choices, raising awareness of health issues and promoting services are well received by local outlets.

Recent examples include:

You can find all our press releases on our website: www.leedsccg.nhs.uk/news

Current communications and campaign activity

During the last two months, our campaigns and communications activity has again been dominated by issues relating to the pandemic, including the vaccination programme and system pressures. This work is being led by the CCG, in partnership with colleagues across the local healthcare system.

Annual reports – the team are currently coordinating, writing and producing the CCG’s statutory annual report and our annual review of involvement, Involving You.

Campaigns – we continue to work with colleagues to develop campaigns that support the Leeds system and our patients:

  • MindMate young people’s mental health campaign – for Children’s Mental Health Week (7-13 Feb), we worked with an agency to produce animations which were shared on socials (paid and organic), including paid ads on Instagram stories. These included a link which directed young people (aged 13-18) to the Urgent Help page on the MindMate website, with info about local crisis services.
  • Seriously resistant – although COVID has delayed the rollout of our annual campaign, we have been working with the citywide antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) group to develop a refreshed campaign for 2021-22, which will include support for the council’s healthy schools team to develop tailored sessions in primary schools and a new website. We have also been discussing with West Yorkshire AMS and communications colleagues the potential to scale up the campaign across the region.
  • UTC promotion – we are developing a 12-18 month behaviour change campaign which aims to alleviate pressures on emergency departments (ED) by encouraging people to choose the right service if they have an injury or health concern which is urgent but not an emergency The multi-channel campaign will build on existing insights and intelligence into the reasons people attend ED and will raise awareness of alternative services such as urgent treatment centres and educate people about when and how to use them. The key messages, narrative, budget and overall timescales for the campaign are currently being agreed. Following this, the visual concepts and messaging will be developed, with the aim of launching the campaign within the next few months.
  • Over 60s harm minimisation – we continue to support a communications campaign aimed at helping people over 60, who might be especially vulnerable to the impact of COVID, to stay self and well.

We also continue to work with colleagues in the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership on several regional campaigns:

  • Together We Can is an integrated multi-media campaign which uses communications and promotion to signpost people to the health and care they need, whilst reducing pressures and protecting our NHS services. Highlighting the strain our services are under, the campaign aims to educate people on self-care and protecting others around them, empowering them to take the right course of action – to get the right care, at the right time, by the right health service professional. In Leeds, have used insight to carry out additional targeted promotion with key population groups, including over 65s and parents of young children.
  • Primary care ‘leaving a gap’ – In response to increasing incidents of unacceptable behaviour, we have been working with primary care and communications colleagues to develop an insight-led campaign to tackle abuse of primary care colleagues. The campaign was initiated in Leeds but has now been scaled up across West Yorkshire. It will launch in March.

In addition, we continue to support national health and awareness campaigns and initiatives including cervical cancer prevention week and children’s mental health week.

City/regional meetings and representation – communications colleagues continue to hold key roles as part of the West Yorkshire and citywide networks.

Communications review – as part of our ongoing work to improve our internal and external communications, we are reviewing our internal communications processes and channels and have developed a refreshed social media strategy.

Covid-19 – we continue to take a lead role in supporting Leeds system with clear and consistent communications about coronavirus and the vaccination programme, sharing key updates with system communications leads via a weekly digest. During this period, we have supported a number of national and local media opportunities and promoted and provided resources an increasing number of pop up and walk-in clinics. We have also ensured that the most current information about new initiatives is available on our website and promoted through our social media. We continue to work with council colleagues to provide resources to support communications and engagement activity in areas of low take up.

Internal communications – we have continued our regular (twice weekly) briefings for primary care and CCG staff and support our chief executive with a monthly team briefs via Microsoft Teams Live.

Media – we have planned and delivered a quarterly media plan to support activity, seek positive media opportunities, mitigate negative coverage and support system priorities, for example around system pressures.

Primary care communications – we continue to support practices by providing patient-facing materials, social media advice and media relations guidance, including press releases to highlight good news stories.

System and winter pressures – we have continued to develop communications to address the significant pressures experienced by the city’s health and care providers. We have also continued to work with colleagues across the city to ensure clear, consistent and effective communications during this period of unprecedented pressure on health and care services. Our campaign schedule for the winter focused on three pillars: staying well, choosing well, valuing our workforce.

Transition to ICS – as the CCG prepares to become part of the new statutory integrated care system on 1 July 2022, the team has been working with colleagues to help ensure a consistent approach, including internal and external communications with staff and partners, developing a refreshed website, intranet and extranet and applying a new visual identity.

Involvement activity

As a result of the ongoing pandemic, most of our involvement activities currently take place online.

  • Big Leeds Chat – we continue to evaluate our approach to involving people.
  • CCG volunteers – there are now nine volunteers. We have met virtually to feed back on the annual review, discuss developments around new ways of working and our collaborative involvement work.
  • Citizen representation – we have been working with CCG colleagues and wider partners, including Healthwatch and Forum Central, to consider frameworks and mechanisms to embed public voice in the Population Health and Care Delivery Boards.
  • Citywide and regional involvement meetings – we continue to attend and support a variety of meetings including Leeds People’s Voices, communities of interest and regional engagement leads groups.
  • Citywide network – LTHT, LCH and the National Institutes for Health Research Leeds Biomedical Research Centre have confirmed they will invest, along with Leeds CCG, in the new Tractivity platform. Healthwatch Leeds are also hoping to join; Leeds City Council and LYPFT are also interested. The platform is scalable – West Yorkshire colleagues have met with Tractivity and will join once they are ready.
  • Collaborative involvement – following the end of the Leeds Voices contract at the end of December, and the November workshops, we held online follow-up workshops in February attended by 28 people to share our learning and consider new ways ahead. Fortnightly steering group meetings followed the workshops to help steer the development of our new community involvement approach.
  • Community mental health transformation funding – we continue to support LYPFT and the involvement lead for this work.
  • Community neuro rehab service redesign – we’ve received good feedback from the Governing Body about the engagement for this project, which is a good example of working in equal partnership with commissioning and providers.
  • COVID-19 vaccination experience survey – having received no bids, we revised the original tender and were able to award it to Skills for Health at the end of February. The final report is due in May 2022.
  • Involving You – we are currently working with a designer on initial designs for our annual review of involvement.
  • Leeds Voices – the final project document (The Asset-Based Community Development Toolkit) was published and shared at the February workshops. All documents (the celebration document, evaluation document and the toolkit) are now available on our website.
  • Lipids – we provided clinical pharmacy colleagues with advice, insight and key patient feedback themes for a new patient education and engagement initiative around lipid management.
  • Networked Data Lab – we have designed an engagement brief for topic 3 and are working with Leeds Involving People (LIP) to ensure that engagement and insight are central to the topic. The NDL PPIE steering group is meeting to talk through the results of topic 2 (children and young people’s access to mental health), pull out main themes and plan You Said, We Dids. Topic 2’s data report will be discussed at the children and young people’s mental health crisis meeting.
  • Planned and long-term care procurements – The ENT/Audiology Combined Impact Assessment was completed and the procurement documents are awaiting sign-off. An insight review is underway to support the service re-design.
  • Patient participation groups (PPGs) – we continue to support PPGs, including developing a PPG email toolkit, which has been trialed with six practices through January. Feedback collected from the pilot will be used to update the email toolkit ahead of a rollout to other practices in the city. We also held a PPG network support group in February, attended by 11 people, where we discussed updates on PPG work and a plan to restart PPGs following the pandemic. The annual PPG review survey closed in January. We received 28 responses with a combination of people from active PPGs, inactive PPGs, members of the public and a member of staff. A report is being written and will be shared by end of February.
  • Shakespeare/Lincoln Green insight review – we have been supporting primary care with an insight review into the Lincoln Green area ahead of a re-procurement of the Shakespeare GP surgery.
  • Spasticity management – the second workshop took place in February, including a CCG volunteer. We advised that the pilot should collect patient experience as there is currently no insight from providers. We will put together a patient experience task group to plan this work.
  • Stroke strategy – due to winter pressures, the timetable for the draft strategy has been pushed back to September 2022. We have established a virtual reference group, which had its first meeting in February, to involve local people and groups with experience of stroke in the development of the strategy and in providing assurance.

Upcoming activity

  • Annual reports – the team will be finalising both the statutory annual reports and accounts and Involving you over the next two months.
  • Campaigns – we will continue to work with colleagues to develop campaigns that support the Leeds system and our patients, as well as look for opportunities to scale up campaigns across the West Yorkshire footprint.
  • Citywide Network – we will be working with the new provider, Tractivity, to have the new platform in place before July 2022.
  • Communications review – as part of our ongoing work to improve our internal and external communications, we will be reviewing our primary care communications channels and briefings.
  • COVID-19 – we will continue to support the Leeds system with clear and consistent communications about coronavirus and the vaccination programme.
  • Media – we will continue to proactively plan PR activity, seek positive media opportunities, mitigate negative coverage and support system priorities. We will also be undertaking refresher crisis communications and media training.
  •  Transition to ICS – as the CCG prepares to become part of the new statutory integrated care system on 1 July 2022, the team will continue with colleagues to help ensure a consistent approach. A significant project for the next two months will be developing a new website for the new Leeds Health and Care Partnership.
  •  Youth Charter – sense checking activity on young people’s survey responses is due to begin shortly through the Voice, Influence and Change, Mindmate and Youthwatch teams and on social media.