Join us at the Inclusion Health Conference on 1 May!

We are looking forward to attending the ICS Inclusion Health Conference on 1 May, bringing together key players in Nottingham healthcare to create a more inclusive care system.

The ICS are bringing together service managers, commissioners and strategic leads to talk about the NHS Inclusion Health Framework and how we can create a fairer, more inclusive, health and care system. The framework focuses on how ICS partners can improve health and care for people facing extreme health inequalities, and the key role partnerships play in addressing wider determinants of health.

Join us to take action with a day providing attendees with the chance to:

• Learn how working in partnership across the ICS, we can take a prevention approach, integrating services to support inclusion health groups to achieve more equitable health outcomes.
• Learn about how you can adopt the 5 principles of the NHS Inclusion Health Framework
• Hear from experts, including people from inclusion health groups
• Learn about how you can use our inclusion health toolkit
• Help develop our inclusion health maturity matrix

The conference will take place from at the Nottingham Council House from 9:30 – 15:30. If you are interested in attending, please following this link to sign up: Inclusion Health Conference Tickets, Thu 1 May 2025 at 09:30 | Eventbrite

Working Together to Understand Neurodivergence and Multiple Disadvantage

Recent studies indicate that 38% of people experiencing Severe and Multiple Disadvantage (SMD) also have neurological conditions such as ADHD, autism, or brain injuries. These findings, along with insight from local partners and views of people with their own lived experiences of SMD, has driven the development of a new Neurodivergence and SMD Learning Series.

The overall aim of this learning series is to:

1. Create free training resources so that colleagues and services are more aware of neurodivergence and SMD
2. Support services to work in a neurodivergence affirmative way

Learning Series Webinars

Working together with colleagues with expertise from across the system, the Nottingham SMD Partnership, Changing Futures and the Nottingham Practice Development Unit (PDU)* have so far delivered four successful webinars:

• Overview of neurodivergence and SMD: a foundational session on neurodivergence in the context of severe and multiple disadvantage
• Speech and language: focusing on adjustments to communication for autistic people
• Neurodivergence in prisons: insights on help for neurodiverse people in prison settings.
• ADHD deep dive: a detailed session on ADHD led by an academic researcher with their own lived experience

Several further events are also currently planned:

• March: Psychotherapeutic Assessment Approaches in the Diagnostic Assessment of ADHD for Adults with Severe Multiple Disadvantage (SMD) by Lisa Murphy and Emma Telling, Change Grow Live – event link
• April-June: webinars on homelessness, neurodivergence diagnosis, and perceptions of autism in service delivery.
• November: a whole day learning event with interactive workshops and presentations.

Neurodivergence communications toolkit

A new toolkit is now also being developed to support staff in delivery roles to improve their communication with neurodivergent individuals. This toolkit will help staff to capture the communication preferences of individuals making it easier for them to get the support they need.

Get involved

All colleagues across the system who can benefit from improving their knowledge around neurodivergence are encouraged to attend. All webinars are free to join.

Find out more about upcoming opportunities to connect and learn more about neurodiversity and SMD.

*The Nottingham Practice Development Unit (PDU) is a shared learning platform for all partner organisations and colleagues interested in improving their ability to manage and respond to the needs of people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage (SMD).

Find out more about what’s on offer here.

Health & Wellbeing LIVE Series 2

The first episode in our new series of Health and Wellbeing LIVE is now on YouTube! Health & Wellbeing LIVE is a video series that discusses some of the pressing issues across the Nottingham healthcare system with key players from across the network.

Dr Andy Foster was joined by our own Tim Guyler, Executive Lead for PBP and Director of Strategy and Integration for Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. They spoke about the challenges and opportunities ahead in 2025 and the importance of continued collaboration across services.

Make yourself a brew and set aside 20mins to watch, or put on in the background podcast-style while you get on with your day.

This is the first episode of the new series, with loads more fascinating discussions lined-up over the next few months. Subscribe to the Nottingham City Place-Based Partnership YouTube channel to get notifications when new episodes are ready to watch.

Catch up on the first series here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwNbplchUN43hyP0zAXc8alpGgH5Ap836&si=cqD7-P2sULaxeWHG

Support continued for people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage in Nottingham City

The Nottingham City Place-Based Partnership is delighted to learn that the government’s Changing Futures programme, which was scheduled to close in March 2025, is to be extending for a further year. Changing Futures has been at the core of the PBP’s severe and multiple disadvantage* (SMD) programme since 2022, supporting people experiencing extreme health inequalities in Nottingham.

As part of the Spending Review settlement covering 2025/26, the government has announced £10m is to be allocated to support the continuation of service provision across the 15 participating areas. Nottingham is to receive just under £650k of this allocation.

The Nottingham City PBP’s SMD programme has been successful in stopping the revolving door of the same services spinning for hundreds of people, improving health outcomes, helping them to recover, sustain tenancies and get back into employment. It has also delivered financial efficiencies across sectors including, health, social care, housing, police and criminal justice, reducing demand pressures and empowered staff to challenge traditional ways of working.

Last year, the Nottingham City PBP secured just under £1.5m in recurrent funding from the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board’s Health Inequalities and Innovation Fund enabling the continuation of core services previously funded under Changing Futures. This announcement from the government allows continuity of the wider programme of work provided in Nottingham since 2022, enabling partners to continue to make progress in transforming the lives of people facing extreme health inequalities.

To learn more about our work to support people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage, watch this episode of Health & Wellbeing LIVE.

* People who experience SMD (co-occurring experiences of homelessness, problematic substance use, mental-ill health, domestic and sexual violence and/or abuse, and offending) are amongst the most vulnerable to poor health outcomes within our population. The challenges they face substantially increases their exposure to chronic health problems, shortened healthy life expectancy, and significantly premature death.

Primary Care and Severe and Multiple Disadvantage Collaboration Project – Access to Healthcare

People experiencing severe multiple disadvantage (SMD – co-occurring experiences of homelessness, substance use, mental-ill health, domestic and sexual violence and/or abuse, and offending) are amongst the most vulnerable within our population to health inequalities and premature mortality.

The challenges they experience in their lives (e.g. due to mental-ill health, trauma, addiction and homelessness) and barriers to accessing preventative healthcare (e.g. due to stigma, exclusions and other reasons) often result in earlier onset of chronic health conditions and longer-term reliance on emergency and more resource intensive interventions (including repeated A&E attendances and unplanned admissions to hospital). People working in healthcare also often encounter difficulty meeting their needs, managing missed appointments, and working to address issues beyond their remit (e.g. housing) – and where clinical interventions are provided, they can be frustrated by people returning to situations that present a persistent risk to their health.

Over the last year, people with lived experience of SMD from Changing Futures Nottingham have collaborated with the Nottingham Practice Development (PDU) and the NCGPA Centre of Excellence to raise awareness and understanding of the key issues and challenges in access to primary care. A range of resource have now been developed across this partnership to help support improved engagement and outcomes from primary care, including:

• A toolkit for practices to use to (registration, environment, flexibility with appointments, access to free training, pathways to external support, etc)
• An ‘I Need Extra Help Card’ scheme for a person to record individual needs and potential adjustments
• An ‘Access to Healthcare’ video featuring people with lived experience and colleagues in primary care
• A wider SMD resource pack for all colleagues working in primary care
• A set of ten lived experience recommendations (to be made available as a poster) to help embed ‘SMD friendly’ approaches, with suggestions including:
  • A flexible appointment system
  • Allowing for reasonable adjustments
  • Providing an SMD ‘drop in’
  • Ensuring services and patient care is trauma-informed

These approaches have been co-produced with the dual aims of:

• Improving patient experience / overall health for people experiencing SMD
• Providing support to colleagues and manage pressures in primary care (e.g. by reducing missed appointments, supporting quicker access to external support to help with wider needs, etc)

These resources have initially been outlined in dedicated PLT sessions on SMD for colleagues in primary care in July, and are now being endorsed and adopted within a new Inclusion Health and SMD Primary Care toolkit being developed locally through a Phoenix Fellowship.

Heart of our Community

Thank you to everyone that came and contributed to our first Heart of our Community event on 26 September, bringing together key voices from the Nottingham healthcare network to discuss how to improve heart health through collaboration.

Heart conditions are one of the leading causes of ill health and premature death in Nottingham, with multiple complex factors contributing to these high levels. Statistics presented on the day by Dr David Johns (Deputy Director of Public Health at Nottingham City Council) showed how poor heart health disproportionately affects people from Black and Asian backgrounds, with smoking and poverty also substantial contributing factors.

To combat the multiple causes of poor heart health and effectively target the communities who are most at risk, we need to share knowledge, experience, and insight across networks. The Heart of our Community event aimed to kickstart such relationships and help us all look at the wider picture of heart health in our communities.

We were privileged to be joined by contributors from across the network who reflected on their experiences of working with patients encountering heart problems, and their thoughts on how we can improve outcomes. After PBP Clinical Director Dr Husein Mawji opened up the event, Dr Andy Foster and Ciara Stuart from the PBP spoke about how Integrated Neighbourhood Working can be utilised to help target specific communities more at-risk of heart conditions.

There were also valuable insights from Dr Emma Sawyer (GP at Sherrington Park Medical Practice), Jules Sebelin (Chief Executive of Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service), and members of the Nottingham CityCare cardiac team. New PBP Chair Tim Guyler closed out the day speaking passionately about why improving heart health is of personal importance to him, and praising the work being done to help connect the dots between services in the city.

We would like to thank everyone who attended the event and shared their thoughts and ideas on how we can work collaboratively to tackling this vital issue in our community. We hope the discussions held and the connections made will help us create a joined-up approach to improving heart health in Nottingham.

You can read more about the purpose of the event here: https://healthandcarenotts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Heart-of-our-community-Event-Summary.pdf

Community Health and Wellbeing Hub wins PMA Award!

Congratulations to the PCN5 (Bestwood & Sherwood) ARRS workforce for their success at 2024 PMA Awards! Their Community Health and Wellbeing Hub took home the top prize in the ‘Innovation in General Practice 2024’ category at last week’s award ceremony.

Their health and wellbeing hub takes an innovative approach to connecting people who often feel shut-out of traditional health services. It creates a space for building communities, while providing attendees health advice and signposting to additional services in the area.

This initiative takes a holistic approach to improving health outcomes for people experiencing isolation and do not have a strong social circle around them. This could because they are recent migrants, are experiencing grief, or have mental/physical health conditions.

The PMA’s are prestigious awards in healthcare, and nomination is national recognition of the high-quality work in reducing healthcare barriers being done by the team in Bestwood & Sherwood.

This nomination follows on from their success at the i2i Awards in September, where the hub picked up the ‘Addressing Health Inequalities Award’. You can read more about that on the NCGPA website here: www.ncgpa.org.uk/news#BlogPost18275

Congratulations to the whole team on their incredible achievement!