Supporting ten hospices across West Yorkshire to work together in a long-term strategic partnership.
West Yorkshire Hospice Collaborative
Across the country, hospices provide end-of-life care to around a quarter of a million people every year, while supporting families through the toughest of times. In West Yorkshire, 10 hospices have come together to work collaboratively to make sure the people of West Yorkshire get access to the right palliative and end-of-life care, at the right time and in the right place.
“It all started during lockdown – we had regular weekly calls across the region to share insight and resources through the crisis,” explains Luen Thompson, Chief Executive of Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice. “We set up very practical measures such as a network for distribution of PPE equipment and, with other charity colleagues, setting up a Grief and Loss line offering telephone support and counseling to those who had lost a loved one through Covid-19.”
Realising that there was a benefit in deepening this collaboration for the long term, Luen and her West Yorkshire colleagues engaged Lucent to help build the network of hospices across the region.
A long-term partnership
Over the past two years, Lucent has undertaken in-depth research with each hospice, developed terms of engagement for the collaboration and supported strategy workshops and awaydays. To help hospices understand the role they play in narrowing health inequalities, Lucent has more recently undertaken data analysis that highlights how well hospices are reaching ethnic minority communities and areas of high deprivation.
“It has been essential to us to have a steady and independent guide to help us navigate through these early days of our partnership. Working with Lucent helped us wade through the treacle and gain clearer insight. Their consultants are incredibly astute with a razor sharp ability to focus on the most important thing. ”
Practical, steady and independent guidance
This work has brought many benefits. The hospices now have a formal role on the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and are working with the NHS to improve understanding of the role of hospices, to secure longer term funding and to work together to make sure services are fit for the future of West Yorkshire.
“Lucent helped us to be really clear about what we wanted to achieve,” Luen continues. “We had already built trust in the immediate response to the Covid crisis, so we knew that having spotted an opportunity for development, motivation was high to make the collaboration work.
“It has been essential to us to have a steady and independent guide to help us navigate through these early days of our partnership. Working with Lucent helped us wade through the treacle and gain clearer insight. Their consultants are incredibly astute with a razor sharp ability to focus on the most important thing. This work enabled us to identify what we are better off doing together whilst still excelling at what we do best as individual hospices. Working together has provided us with a common point of reference and a structure for future work that I am confident will help us ensure more families across West Yorkshire can access the quality of care and expertise available through the hospice network.”
If you are looking to enhance your social impact by working in partnership with others, let us know. We'd love to support you on your journey.
