Health and Care Professional Leadership Network growth continues
The Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board (BSW ICB) continues to prioritise the advancement of health and care professional leadership throughout the region.
The BSW Health and Care Professional Leadership Network (HCPLN) has recently published a draft annual report outlining achievements and growth over the past twelve months.
Since coming together in January 2023, the HCPLN has experienced significant growth, with membership of its NHS Futures Platform reaching 356 individuals. Additionally, a monthly newsletter now reaches over 700 recipients, building broader engagement.
The group also launched a Health and Care Professional directory in December 2023. This collects more information about members including their demographics and areas of interest. To date, 123 members have joined this directory allowing the team to more effectively connect members with leadership opportunities.
Events are central to the HCPLN by convening a diverse range of leaders together to share and learn, and three large face-to-face events have been held over the last year, with approximately 100 members attending each.
The first in March 2023 focused on the ‘Big Conversation, socialising the concept of Health and Care Professional Leadership and starting a collaborative process to develop a framework. The second event in October 2023 looked at ‘Inspiring Action’ and focused on decision quality and leadership qualities in a complex world. The third event took place in April 2024 with a theme of ‘ ‘The Leadership Effect on Learning’ and focused on individual learning and system learning.
Through these face-to-face events and many other engagement opportunities, the HCPL has collaborated with over 250 health and care professionals and coproduced a Health and Care Professional Leadership framework which outlines a vision, statement of intent and commitments. This was completed in October 2023 and was endorsed by the ICB Executive in March 2024.
Parallel to this work, the HCPL has been working on developing wider commitments including developing ‘Decision Quality for health and care professional leaders’ training and promoting population health insight tools to members.
The HCPL team say Health and Care Professional Leadership needs to be everyone in the ICBs business, and want to encourage colleagues in BSW to get involved by:
- Joining the network by following this link: BSW Health and Care Professional Leadership – FutureNHS Collaboration Platform and requesting access or by emailing: bswicb.hcpd@nhs.net.
- Encouraging others, in the ICB and in the wider system to join our health and care professional leadership network.
- Identifying opportunities for health and care professional leadership in your work areas and contacting bswicb.hcpd@nhs.net to explore how this can be fulfilled.
Lucy Heath, Swindon Health and Care Professional Director, BSW Integrated Care Board said:
“The BSW Health and Care Professional Leadership Network has achieved a great deal in its first year to boost collaboration across organisations and sectors.
Together we have the opportunity to ensure that fully inclusive multiprofessional health and care professional leadership is central to designing and delivering integrated care and meeting the complex needs of people, rather than just treating their individual conditions
The network is open to all, from current leaders to future leaders, and I would encourage those working across BSW to find out more and sign up to our NHS Futures site.”