Reflections from NHS ConfedExpo (GM VCFSE Leadership)

Duncan Craig, GM VCFSE Leadership Group member and CEO of We Stand Together, has provided an excellent summary and thoughts after attending both days of the Expo, including the welcome speech and the day 2 keynote speech from Secretary of State for Health, Rt Hon Wes Streeting.

The NHS Confederation is the membership organisation that brings together, supports and speaks for the whole healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Members include Hospitals, Trusts, NHS providers, and the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector.

The opening of the Confed, by Lord Victor Adebowale, set the tone for the two days. Lord Adebowale uncomfortably acknowledged the pending change within NHS and NHS England and what that means, which very much put a heaviness in the air.

As Victor closed the welcome, he talked about valuing people, and all people. He gave a moving example of this in talking about a close family member who passed away at the age of 92 very recently and how she was a nurse for so many years but her passing was not the dignified death it should have been.

“She got a black service, not an NHS service. So I have to address the inequity that still exists within the NHS, in terms of the experiences that people who look like me continue to receive. It just hasn't got any better. It is not acceptable that someone who looks like me, on average waits 20 minutes longer in A&E than white patients. To achieve an inclusive, equitable NHS we need an inclusive equitable culture from top to bottom.”

"The welcome address set the tone for me, and many others I met throughout the day, about being brave and having honest conversations" - Duncan Craig

A focus on tech

Duncan noted that there is no doubt in his mind that “how can tech help health and how can health engage tech” was the overwhelming theme of Confed, whether that was on purpose or by design, raising the question, how is the VCFSE part of this digital health revolution. Is the NHS asking the VCFSE where it’s up to? How can the two entities be EQUAL partners in shaping a future health system that involves tech appropriately but also be daring together?

Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care keynote speech

Duncan summaries his key takeaways from what the Secretary of State had to say :

• He is wholly supportive and wants to encourage tech involvement and innovation in health and social care.
• He 100% wants to assure us all that the NHS is always going to be a people business.
• He wants us all to be cautious and take a considered tentative approach to private investment.
• And he recognises the NHS has been built on the hard work and effort of people born outside of the UK (stating it’s not a coincidence that NHS was built when Windrush docked) and it will always continue to be a diverse organisation; but that we can’t keep taking staff from other countries (especially those on the WHO red list) as its not ethical or in the best interests of mankind and we have to invest in and build our own, citing the example of getting a large number of extra GPs in as there was plenty that were unemployed.

Duncan and other VCFSE Leaders from around England and Wales shared a consensus that it was disappointing that Wes didn’t really talk about the VCFSE, despite talking about hospital to community; and there was not enough recognition of the breath of resource in the VCFSE sector.

Ben Whalley, GM VCFSE Leadership Group member and CEO at Gaddum, also shared on LinkedIn his reflections on the Expo and the VCFSE sector’s role in health delivery and the importance of partnerships that are “real, trusted, sustained and properly invested in”. He added that he was grateful to hear calls for system change – “from tackling chronic underinvestment in social care, to rethinking the way we use innovation, prevention, and data”.

"There’s a growing understanding that the NHS alone can’t deliver the vision of health and wellbeing we all aspire to and I’m hearing more intentionality towards the VCFSE sector’s role in this." - Ben Whalley, CEO at Gaddum

Edna Robinson, GM VCFSE Leadership Group member, Executive Chair of the Alternative Provider Collaborative (APC) and CEO of the Big Life Group spoke on a panel around re-incentivising financial flows in healthcare to bring care closer to home. Suggestions included (but were not limited to) simplification of contract payments for acute (short-term) and primary (the first point of contact for individuals seeking healthcare) care, and using single electronic patient records (EPR) to analyse data to give clear perspective on resources consumed and deploy AI to guide more effective resource allocation. There was also a discussion about profiteering and commercialisation of Health and Social Care. APC colleagues also reflected on a panel discussing how to turn population health data into improved outcomes, which again emphasized the importance of relationships and partnerships across the system.

Eve Holt, Head of Policy and Implementation at GMCA and previous member of the GM VCFSE Leadership Group, was part of a main stage session on day 2, on “delivering change: lessons from reforming public services”. She spoke about GM Live Well and the need for constant care and attention to people, trust, relational working, having the humility to look beyond own institutions and keep sight of the wisdom, care, creativity, energy that citizens, communities, VCFSE bring which need to be resourced. Read Eve's LinkedIn post for more details.