Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust is today (11 February) launching its five-year plan that has been developed with the help of local communities, that sets out its approach for delivering services to 2023.

The long-term plan follows the biggest community-wide conversation that the Trust has ever done, with almost 7,000 comments and ideas from the Trust’s 2,800 staff, service users, and other health and care organisations across Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven, and Wakefield where the Trust provides children’s services.

The plan recognises the challenges for all NHS organisations of balancing financial pressures and increasing demands for services, and the need to do things differently to meet local needs.

Chief Executive, Brent Kilmurray, said: “Everyone who is involved with the Trust, whether it’s our staff, the people we care for, or our partners, are really important in shaping our goals for the next five years, so that people get the right support, in the right place.   This is the first time that we’ve engaged all our communities on this scale, to ensure our long-term goals meet their needs.

“Our plan is ambitious but builds on our strengths, with the aim of connecting people to the best quality care, when and where they need it, and for staff, to be the best place to work.  Working with our partners across health, voluntary and care organisations is key to this – we can’t do it on our own. It’s about us all working together so we can wrap care around people, so they can be as healthy as they can be, to better support their recovery and wellbeing.”

The Trust’s new core aim of making ‘better lives, together’ supports this, with three new values of ‘we care, we listen, we deliver’ that describe how staff will work with each other and the people they support.  The plan also identifies ten key areas that the Trust will be focusing on to 2023 to make it happen, including staff development and leadership, continuous improvement, using technology to improve services, co-ordinating and co-producing care with others, and if there are gaps in services, developing new ones to meet people’s needs.

The plan is available on the Trust’s website at www.bdct.nhs.uk and will be supported by more detailed annual operational plan for its mental health, community and learning disability services, starting with 2019/20, to be published this spring.