York Road Local Care Partnership covers the geographical area running up the A64, York Road, from Saxton Gardens, Cross Green, Richmond Hill and Osmondthorpe through Killingbeck to Cross Gates.
We have a diverse Local Care Partnership that includes local GPs (Garden Surgery and The Medical Centre (Laybourn & Partners) York Road Surgery), councillors, community health services, public health, adult social care and a broad range of third sector and community groups. We also have partners from the Department of Work and Pensions, employment services and housing.
One of our aims is to develop a strong identity as ‘York Road’ to ensure that we provide services and support that meet the needs of people living in this area. Before COVID-19, this included holding our partnership meetings in different community venues to learn more about our doorstep resources. We moved to ‘virtual hosts’ during COVID who would start the meeting by telling us about their service. We are now holding a mix of face-to-face and virtual meetings. You don’t need to be a regular attendee at partnership meetings to be a virtual host. If you offer support in our area and would like to be a virtual host, get in touch – we’d love to know more.
Current priorities:
Joining up care for people with health needs
We are looking at how we can work better together to provide support to people who have health needs that mean they need to see different health and care professionals at different times. We want to make sure we have a joined-up plan to work with people as one big team. We also want to make sure that having a health condition doesn’t stop anyone from enjoying life – so as part of this work, we look at what is important to people and make sure they can access things that interest them and socialise.
The primary care team lead on work identifying older people in our community that are living with frailty. The team make sure that they are up to date with their health checks and getting the care they need then link with partners within the Local Care Partnership to ensure that they are connected to their local community.
The LCP currently have a focus on the impact of the cost of living crisis on local residents. The regular LCP meetings provide partners with space to collaborate and share what is going on across the patch to make best use of resources and help local people find support that is right for them.
Developing You
This is a project aimed at supporting people interested in getting back into employment and who would like to try volunteering or want to be more connected to their local community. We take small groups of people through a eight-week course that looks and health and wellbeing and helps people develop skills that they need to help them get into work.
Developing You starts with a one-to-one conversation, which gives you the chance to decide whether the course is for you. At the start, you are supported to think about what you want to get from the course, and this is how we judge success. You get the chance to meet up with people in a similar position to yourself and can go at your own pace.
Digital Health Hubs
Healthwatch Leeds’ report on ‘Digitising Leeds: Risks and opportunities for reducing health inequalities in Leeds’ highlighted the inequalities certain communities may face when accessing digitised health and care services. COVID helped to identify the benefits of going digital and has accelerated the process of health and care services becoming more digitised. Despite its benefits, this has presented some issues for those who do not have access to digital equipment or have low digital skills and motivation.
South Leeds LCP, due to its diverse demographic, was identified as an area of great potential to the scope and design interventions for digitising health services. They worked with 100% Digital Leeds to create a digital health hub network. You can find out more about Digital Health Hubs here – Digital Health Hubs – 100% Digital Leeds (digitalinclusionleeds.com)
This model proved successful and we are now rolling the model out across Local Care Partnerships. York Road LCP was identified as the second LCP to start the rollout. This is because this part of East Leeds has some of the most digitally excluded communities in Leeds.
The partnership identified that they needed a digital inclusion worker who could work across partner organisations to help build the network and provide specialist support. The partnership have just appointed to this new role to continue to develop a model of digital inclusion that will work for the local population. The post will be based at The Old Fire Station but work across the local area.
How to get involved
We are keen to include more partners across the patch, in particular those who can support our current priorities and community groups. If you would like more information or to join us, please contact [email protected].