Wolverhampton City PCT ... Joined-up leadership for joined-up services
"The underlying causes of poor health are poverty, poor housing, social exclusion and low educational attainment. I am not going to stop people getting sick unless I work with other people to address those underlying causes." Jon Crockett, Chief Executive of Wolverhampton PCT
For Jon Crockett, Chief Executive of Wolverhampton Primary Care Trust, health inequalities cannot be solved by those in the NHS alone. "Health does not exist in isolation," he says. "The underlying causes of poor health are poverty, poor housing, social exclusion and low educational attainment. I am not going to stop people getting sick unless I work with other people to address those underlying causes."
It is this philosophy that has led the Trust to put partnership working with Wolverhampton's other public bodies at the centre of its attempts to improve services to black and minority ethnic communities. Like other areas of the country, Wolverhampton has a Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) - a body set up to strengthen the communication with and between public bodies, local government and the voluntary and community sectors.
Strategic approach
Six months ago, Jon became the chair of the Wolverhampton Partnership board and has since worked tirelessly with dozens of other organisations including the police, Wolverhampton University, Jobcentre Plus, Wolverhampton City Council and the city's primary and acute trusts to achieve a joint strategy to improve services for black and minority ethnic communities.
"Everybody who plays a leading role in Wolverhampton, from the Council Leader to the Vice Chancellor of the university, has made a strategic commitment that this city is going to make a difference," says Jon, who has chaired the Partnership for six months. "Part of this is standing up jointly and saying race equality is crucial for the future success of our city. Unless we work together we won't come anywhere near solving this agenda."
Black and minority ethnic communities make up more than twenty per cent of Wolverhampton's population. Importantly, the Partnership involves significant input from local black and minority ethnic organisations and faith groups, who are involved in everything the board does through forums such as the Black and Minority Ethnic Forum.
Local people
Kanta Chankria, a Public Health Support Worker for the Trust, with a background in black and minority ethnic participation, says the involvement of local people is essential if real changes are to be made. "We can all sit at the top and discuss what's needed but it's no good unless we take into consideration the makeup of the community, the skills of the community, the issues they face," she says. That's why the forums are so important because they allow the community to engage."
She agrees that the Trust's 'joined-up' work - which also includes key roles in the Neighbourhood Renewal Partnership, addressing health inequalities and representation on the city's Health and Social Care Partnership Board - is the only way to make long-lasting changes. "Issues tend to come in clusters," she says. "If young people are offending, they might also be truanting from school and taking drugs. The question is how can the police, education and health services work together to help that young person get better? That's where the Partnership comes in."
Through the Wolverhampton Partnership, all of the city's statutory bodies have now agreed on a joint equality strategy and communications policy and are working on information-sharing practices to improve services across the board.
For the past two years, the Trust has held an annual conference on race equality in health and social care with its LSP partners. The last one, in February (2004), attracted 250 people. "They were called Let's Just Do It and the idea was to stop talking about race equality and get on with it," says Jon. "It was a way of seeing what we've done."
Other measures include training programmes for public sector bodies across the city on how to better involve local black and minority ethnic communities, the creation of a city-wide interpretation and translation service to improve access to services across the board and the creation of a network of nurseries, two of which are in predominantly black and minority ethnic communities.
Though progress has been made, Jon stresses that complacency is not an option. "Wolverhampton is an integrated community," he says. "But we recognise that there is a lot more work that needs to be done. We need to work constantly to improve things and the only way we can do that is to work together."