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The Headingley Group
Linking Health, Wealth, Learning and Skills Development in West Yorkshire
Progress Report (February 2005)
Linda Pollard OBE, Chair, West Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority
From conversations I had been having across the patch I was beginning to get the feeling that people were tired of being told that the answer to every problem in the public sector was ‘more partnership working’. I sensed too that some of the excitement of our early successes of ‘joined up working’ in West Yorkshire had faded and that much of the innovative thinking and commitment was in danger of being replaced with tired conventions – people just going through the partnership motions.
Yet the power of ‘whole systems working’ to deliver real improvements to the lives of people is still undeniable. The only way we are going to tackle some of the deep seated problems and fully exploit some of the new opportunities is by the public agencies working closely in concert and by our involving the other stakeholders – the private and voluntary sector and most of all the people of West Yorkshire themselves. We were therefore determined to take a fresh look at the whole issue and asked some of the most powerful players from the public services in the region to see if they could come up with a way of doing things differently.
The result was the The Headingley Summit - sponsored by the University of Leeds, the West Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority and the Government Office for Yorkshire and Humberside. It was designed and facilitated by the Office for Public Management and brought together many of the Chief Executives and Senior Officers involved in developing the health, wealth, learning and skills of people in West Yorkshire. We wanted to see if we could find a way of revitalising partnerships and to see if there would be any enthusiasm for developing and experimenting with more radical models for collaborative working in the areas of Health, Economic Development, Skills, Employment and Education.
The presentations and conversations through the day were lively and we began to build the trust that will support us to do business differently in the future. We discussed what we had learnt about the successes and failures of partnership working thus far, heard from a series of experts about their experience of joint working, talked about what works and finally identified three projects that would serve as ‘learning laboratories’ for us – helping us understand how best West Yorkshire agencies could work together to make tangible improvements to the lives of local people.
We succeeded - but only so far. Yes, we agreed to the projects and yes, there were lots of commitments made and responsibilities accepted. But the real success of the Headingley Group will be judged partly by the benefits we create for the people involved in the pilots and more particularly by the ability of what are after all, some of the most powerful public sector players in West Yorkshire, to change our behaviours and deliver real innovation in the way we work together in the future.
I would like to thank Andrew Foster, Workforce Director for the NHS, Sir Howard Newby, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Dame Sandra Burslem, Deputy National Chair for the Learning and Skills Council and Tony Elson, Local Government Adviser to the Department of Health who were kind enough to share their views on partnership working with us at the Summit. My thanks also to Professor Laurie McMahon who designed and facilitated the day and especially to Ed Balls who spoke after dinner and whose enthusiasm for what we were trying to do was really infectious.
Reports and presentations from the summit are listed below.
Report - inaugural summit event Nov 2004 (PDF file 186kb)
Presentation - Dame Sandra Burslem (PDF file 59kb)
Presentation - Tony Elson (PDF file 5lkb)
Presentation - Andrew Foster (PDF file 569kb)
Presentation - Sir Howard Newby (PDF file 46kb)
Press Release (PDF file 69kb)
Report - second summit meeting May 2005 (PDF file 148kb)
from ‘Our Region, Our Health’ Report – Regional Director of Public Health 2004):
• There are 1,800 extra deaths each year in Yorkshire and Humber
compared to the national average
• 10,000 people die prematurely in the region from smoking-related
disease each year.
• 29% of Yorkshire and Humber wards are in England’s top 20%
most deprived. Children are much more likely to live in low income or
workless households.
• The region has the third highest rate of long-term limiting illness
and claimant rate for disability living allowance in the country.
• Levels of physical activity in Yorkshire and the Humber are lower
than the national average.
• There are approximately 650,000 hospital attendances in the Yorkshire
and Humber Region due to alcohol misuse. The estimated cost to healthcare
in the region is £170 million.
Further Information
Sabrina Armstrong, Senior Media and Communications Manager at West Yorkshire
Strategic Health Authority
Telephone: 0113 295 2014