Sian Thomas, Interim Partnership Director for OneWolverhampton, talks about the work they are doing to build and shape the place-based partnership in Wolverhampton.
“As individual organisations we all want the same thing and that is to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes and the ability to access fair and equal services for the people of Wolverhampton.
“By working in partnership with our housing, community and voluntary sector organisations and local people, we are in a much better position to begin to narrow the widening gaps in health inequalities across the city.
“This of course means working closer together, in different ways and having different kinds of conversations. We need to challenge each other, and know that it’s ok to do that, if it means we achieve what we have collectively set out to do.
“At the moment we are working on building on our foundations, developing our relationships and getting the structures and systems right so we can dedicate our time and attention on delivering our outcomes.
“Our aim with everything we deliver, is to put people at the heart of what we do and support them to get the right care, in the right place, at the right time by working better together.
“We want to recognise and understand what makes Wolverhampton special and what we need to foster and innovate because it’s a real strength, or what we need to improve because it’s a disadvantage and an inequality compared to other areas.
“Some of the priority areas we have identified so far, which we will focus our attention on, is children and young people, primary care development, out of hospital services, prevention, urgent and emergency care and adult mental health.
“Whilst we are building our foundations this hasn’t stopped demonstrating the power of partnership working. We have received national recognition for the implementation of virtual wards, successfully established a vaccination centre hub in the Mander Centre delivering Covid vaccinations and have shown true joined up working on the development of our winter plan for this year. This has involved working together across the Partnership and supporting schemes from Compton Hospice, Age UK, the British Red Cross as well as the NHS and City of Wolverhampton Council.
“Developing place-based partnerships is certainly not an easy thing to do and whilst we have the benefit of long trusted relationships, we also have our challenges to overcome. We need to be able to work in a way is supported by system, allows us to move at pace and removes some of the barriers that hinder true integrated working.
“There is a huge job to be done and we have a long way to go but I’m confident that by doing it together we will be successful.”
