We want to hear from you, our residents and staff who make up our communities across Norfolk and Waveney.

Hundreds of people helpfully shared their views earlier this year about what they think we should focus on, to improve health and care services more generally across Norfolk and Waveney. Part of this invaluable feedback was focussed on community services, such as community mental health services, health visiting services, and support for people who have left hospital, to help with their recovery journey.

Using this vital feedback, we have started an important piece of work to listen to our residents, staff and communities to further understand what people think about health and social care services in the community.

This is a crucial part of the journey to make sure that your thoughts and views are firmly embedded into describing what the future vision for community services across Norfolk and Waveney should look like and how we can improve outcomes and experiences for both residents and staff.

To ensure we can listen to as many people as possible, to help influence and inform this important review, there are several ways you can get involved.

Five online workshops will take place throughout July and August. Each workshop will be tailored to different localities across Norfolk and Waveney, to consider local perspectives, based on our residents who live there and ensure local issues, challenges and gaps are used as helpful context.

Each resident engagement workshop will be open to all residents living in Norfolk and Waveney, covering five broad areas, which are more commonly known in our Integrated Care System (ICS) as ‘places’. Place-based partnerships bring together the NHS, local councils and voluntary organisations, residents, people who access services, carers and families. These partnerships will lead design and delivery of integrated services in their local area.

• South Norfolk – towns and villages, such as Thetford, Long Stratton and Harleston. The South Norfolk event takes place on Wednesday 12 July 2023, 2-3pm (please register to secure your place). This event will be led by local Place Board Chair, Dr Ge Yu.

• Norwich – the city centre, towns and villages which make up Norwich. The Norwich event takes place on Wednesday 19 July 2023, 5-6pm (please register to secure your place). This event will be led by local Place Board Chair, Tracy Williams.

• North Norfolk – towns and villages such as Fakenham, Wells-next-the-sea, Aylsham and Holt. The North Norfolk event takes place on Friday 21 July 2023, 1-2pm (please register to secure your place). This event will be led by local Place Board Chair, Dr James Gair.

• Great Yarmouth and Waveney – areas such as Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Beccles, Bungay and Waveney as a whole. The Great Yarmouth and Waveney event takes place on Tuesday 1 August 2023, 5-6pm (please register to secure your place). This event will be led by local Place Board Chair, Jonathan Barber.

• West Norfolk – towns and villages such as King’s Lynn, Downham Market, Dersingham, Heacham and Hunstanton. The West Norfolk event takes place on Thursday 10 August 2023, 1-2pm (please register to secure your place). This event will be led by local Place Board Chair, Carly West-Burnham.

In addition, a short survey is available to capture the views and thoughts of people who cannot attend one of our online events. The survey will be open until Sunday 12 August 2023.

Further information about the community services review is available on the Norfolk and Waveney ICS website.

Earlier this week, the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS) has published its first ever joint forward plan. After engaging with thousands of residents and staff to create future priorities, this vital plan will shape the future of health and care services, helping people in Norfolk and Waveney to lead longer, healthier and happier lives.

In July 2022, Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) were given statutory footing across England, bringing health and care organisations together to address health inequalities and plan services to better meet the needs of our number one priority – our residents and communities.

Locally, health and social care services, our Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Services (VCSE) partners and our residents, staff and communities have been working together, breaking down barriers between health and social care services.

Our plan, published on the NHS’ 75th birthday, has been built on what our residents and staff have told us and sets out in more detail how the local NHS and care services will implement our Integrated Care Strategy, as well as how we will address more immediate priorities.

Over the past few years health and care services have worked together with increasing collaboration in Norfolk and Waveney, as they have done across the country.

We have developed a set of eight ambitions to create services that meet the needs of the different people and groups that live in Norfolk and Waveney.

1. Population Health Management, Reducing Inequalities and Supporting Prevention – to enable all people to stay healthy by predicting and planning for health and care needs before they happen, and ideally preventing them if we can. Programmes will include tackling smoking during pregnancy by developing and providing a maternity led stop smoking service for pregnant women and people, early cancer diagnosis through the Targeted Lung Health Check Programme and Cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention.

2. Primary care resilience and transformation – this is your local doctor, sometimes known as general practice. Other services that make up primary care are local pharmacies, dentists and opticians. We want to provide a wider range of services closer to home and improve access to dentistry services both in the short term and longer term.

3. Improving services for Babies, Children and Young People and developing our Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) – all Babies, Children and Young People will have the best start in life, achieved through person and family centred, high quality support to enable them to Flourish. We will focus on collaborative working with system partners to promote the importance of a strong start in life for children and young people; their health and wellbeing will determine our future. We want to create a health and care system that is genuinely accessible to all.

4. Transforming Mental Health Services – across Norfolk and Waveney, we want people to have safe, effective and efficient mental health services that they deserve. Part of this programme is about supporting improvements across specialist mental health provision, as well as ensuring there are more services in local communities to help keep people emotionally well. We want to build resources for early intervention and work with partners to deliver better health outcomes, as well as improving support for children and young people and providing more support for people living with multiple and complex needs.

5. Transforming care in later life – to work with all system partners to improve and better integrate health and care for people in later life (including at the end of their life) across Norfolk and Waveney. We need to adapt services to ensure that the people of Norfolk and Waveney are supported to age well. We will develop a shared vision and strategy with older people that will help us to transform our services to be easy to access and designed and wrapped around the needs of older people.

6. Improving urgent and emergency care – when you are unwell, these services provide support and care and can involve your local doctor or hospital services for more urgent issues such as a stroke, heart attacks, severe blood loss and severe respiratory illness. We will support community teams to respond to urgent care needs which are not life threatening but cannot wait, therefore allowing the ambulance service to better respond to more serious issues.

7. Elective recovery and improvement – over the last two years in particular, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have had to wait for surgery, procedure or treatment. Reducing our waiting lists is a big priority. We want to utilise capacity across all health system partners and implement digital technology to enable elective recovery.

8. Improving productivity and efficiency – We are determined to continue to make improvements to health and care services across Norfolk and Waveney. Above all, we need to make sure that we can provide the right care for people at the right time and right place. And doing so, we need to make sure we stay within the budget we have allocated. We want to improve the services we provide by enhancing productivity and value for money, embracing digital innovation and delivering services together where it makes sense to do so.

You can read more about our Joint Forward Plan here.

Residents in Norfolk and Waveney are being urged to think NHS 111 first and to only attend an Emergency Department if it’s absolutely necessary to ensure that care is available to patients who need it most during planned industrial action by doctors next week.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has announced that junior doctors will take part in industrial action day and night, from 7am on Thursday 13 July until 7am on Tuesday 18 July. Senior doctors and hospital consultants will then also be striking for a further 48 hours, from 7am on Thursday 20 July until 7am on Saturday 22 July.

These strikes will impact both routine and emergency care.

It is really important people do not delay seeking help from the NHS if they feel unwell, but we need to be aware that things will be working differently and with fewer staff than normal on these days.

The best way to get urgent medical help is to visit 111.nhs.uk or call 111 for anything that feels urgent, or if you are unsure what to do.

The 111 team can often help there and then on the phone, but for more serious issues, they can also direct you to the most appropriate place, including arranging a home visit or booking in a timed appointment at an emergency department.

But, if it’s a life-threatening emergency, please do call 999 or come straight to your local emergency department.

All of our hospitals will also significantly reduce the number of planned or elective services (routine operations, procedures and outpatient appointments) during this time, to allow remaining staff to focus on providing emergency and inpatient care.

We understand how frustrating this can be for patients and we are sorry that many people will have appointments rearranged.

If you have a medical appointment and are not contacted directly, please continue to attend your appointment as usual. If you are unable to make any NHS appointment, please remember to cancel any booked transport, and please contact the number on appointment letters so that it can be reallocated to another patient.

You can read more here.

The Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB) Digital Health and Social Care Team has been selected as one of nine finalists for the Virtual or Remote Care Initiative of the Year at the highly esteemed HSJ Patient Safety Awards.

This national accolade recognises the team’s exceptional efforts in leveraging digital technology to revolutionise social care and improve patient outcomes. The Digital Health and Social Care Team, in collaboration with the IC24 Integrated Urgent Care and eight local Care Homes, embarked on a pioneering project to empower Care Home staff to provide clinicians with reliable observations during proactive ward rounds delivered at weekends and on bank holidays.

Find out more here.

People across Norfolk and Waveney will be able to have imaging faster and earlier diagnoses thanks to three new diagnostic centres set to be built in the region over the next two years.

A project to create new outpatient imaging buildings at each of the three hospitals in Norfolk and Waveney has been given the green light by the Department of Health and Social Care and will see £85.9 million capital invested, the largest investment in the region for over 20 years.

The new facilities will be based at the James Paget University Hospital, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn.

Each of the sites will house MRI and CT scanners as well as X-ray and Ultrasound imaging. These are used for diagnosis and monitoring of a very wide range of conditions, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory diseases, trauma, musculoskeletal diseases, neurology and, most recently, COVID-19. To help deliver the scans, there will be more staff recruited including radiographers, radiologists and support staff.

This collaborative approach between hospitals and the wider Integrated Care System to deliver these services will:

• Increase capacity for diagnostic imaging
• Separate GP referrals and Outpatient appointments from Inpatient and Emergency demand, improving waiting times
• Improve health outcomes with earlier diagnoses
• Provide modern, bright facilities and state-of-the-art equipment to improve the experience for patients and staff
• Standardise practices and collaborative working in Imaging services across the three hospitals.

Find out more here.

Hundreds of families are being asked for their views about changes to the way out of school activities and respite are provided for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) in Norfolk.

Norfolk County Council is proposing changing the way children’s needs are assessed for Short Breaks. It is consulting on a new approach to work with families to create a plan of activities and support for children with SEND which focus on their needs, instead of focusing on setting a budget for the child and matching support to that budget.

It is part of a broader review of the county council’s £2.4 million a year Short Breaks service, which supports around 1,700 families with activities and support at home, at centres and in the community.

The consultation and review do not propose any reduction in access to Short Breaks or reduction of the service’s £2.4 million annual budget. It seeks to increase choice of activities on offer in local areas and give opportunities to experience activities together, if that is what’s right for a child and their family.

The Short Breaks service provides assessments and funding for children and young people with SEND aged from five to 17 to take part in out of school activities including summer clubs, days out, specialist support and care, and overnight stays. It is currently facing a 75% increase in demand for its services.

Short Breaks aim to provide the additional support children with SEND need to have fun experiences, establish friendships, and develop confidence, independence, and the social and emotional skills to enable them to transition to adult life successfully. Whilst the children are participating in activities, respite is provided for their families.

The consultation is open to all including families not currently in receipt of Short Breaks but who may apply in the future. Families already in receipt of Short Breaks have been contacted directly.

To get involved visit our short breaks pages.

The consultation can be completed online or printed off and posted back to the council for free. It is also available in large print and easy read. It is open until Tuesday 25 July.

We are pleased to share with you the latest blog post from Dr Frankie Swords.

This blog has been posted on the blog section of the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System website. Please feel free to share this with your colleagues and anyone else who might be interested in reading it.

We are pleased to share with you the latest blog post from Tricia D’Orsi.

This blog has been posted on the blog section of the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System website. Please feel free to share this with your colleagues and anyone else who might be interested in reading it.