This bulletin

Welcome to the latest edition of the Communities of Interest Network bulletin. In this bulletin you will find information on some relevant training sessions focused on health inequalities, some summer events and upcoming campaigns, such as the Northern Man Festival and the Mindwell Give A Hoot! campaign.

We’d also encourage you to have a look at the Voice and Influence section of the bulletin, if you have an interest in self-neglect, end of life care or brain health research, there is information here on how to get involved.

The sections of this bulletin are as follows:

• COIN News
• Forum Central Updates
• Member/Partner Updates
• Events/Training
• Signposting
• Funding
• Next Bulletin
  

COIN News

Communities of Interest Network Meeting - 29th March

It was good to see some of you at our last in-person COIN meeting, which took place on Wednesday 29th March at the Leeds Health and Care Academy. Within the meeting attendees had a chance to feed in to the Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust Quality Improvement Project and have some Open Space conversations led by members.

The Open Space, action focused conversations provided an opportunity for members to discuss the things that matter most to their groups/organisations and the communities they work with. Chosen topics included sustainable funding, support for small organisations, work with children and young people and connections with communities. 

If you would like to raise a topic for discussion in a future meeting, please do let us know.

Following the constructive conversation in the meeting Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust (LCH) would like to hear more about people's experiences of their services, especially around communication. If you or any of the people you work with would like to feed in please contact the LCH Patient Experience Team (PET). PET can be contacted through the online form LCH Compliments, Comments and Complaints, email to [email protected] or by phone 0113 220 8585, 9.30 - 4.30pm, Monday - Friday.

Next meeting - 7th June

Our next Communities of Interest Network meeting will be Wednesday 7th June 2023, 10:30-12:00, and will be held on Zoom.

We will let you know more about the theme and agenda shortly. If you have any updates you would like to give or any topics you would like to discuss please contact us on [email protected].

COIN satisfaction survey

We would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to give us some feedback on COIN to support our learning, development and sustainability. It would be particularly helpful to know:

• What you find valuable about being part of the network
  
• If there are any practical examples of how the network has benefited you and your work
  
• Anything you would like to see changed or developed
  
• Any gaps you see in our membership

Communities of Interest Network members' satisfaction survey

You are also welcome to send any feedback by email on [email protected] or let us know and we can arrange a call with you.

Forum Central Updates

Community Champions

Community Champions are a bank of volunteers who help to share key public health messages across Leeds. For more information on their volunteering roles, receiving their newsletter, or if you would like to request the support of Community Champion volunteers at an event, see the Community Champions overview here. 

Forum Central Survey

As a member of COIN, you should have recently received our Forum Central Survey. This has been sent to one contact in each organisation. If you haven't filled this in yet, it would be really helpful if you could complete it for your organisation.

The survey will help us to make sure we have your information up to date, help us to best represent your organisation and share the most appropriate opportunities. The information will be valuable for us at COIN, to know which areas of our future work could be most relevant for you.

If you haven't received the survey, or you would like it to be sent to a different person, please contact [email protected].

Forum Central Membership

Benefits of membership:

Be informed - We share specialist updates, sector wide information, partnership working and funding opportunities.

Be connected – We host useful networking opportunities and regular meetings where you can build relationships and input into key developments, work and strategy that impact the communities you work with.

Be visible – We are proud of the vibrant third sector in Leeds and will shout about your work.

If you would like to find out more or apply to become a member, please get in touch with Megan, our Member Support Worker: [email protected].

Join today and be part of the collective voice – membership is free.  

See the Forum Central membership web page.

Member/Partner Updates

Events/Training

Launch of Health Equity North

Launching on 19 April 2023, with talks and panels on policy, learning and the third sector, Health Equity North is a virtual institute focused on finding place-based solutions to public health problems and health inequalities.

Join them at the University of Leeds to hear about the exciting work of this new institute.

Bookings for the Health Equity North event can be made through Eventbrite.

Reducing Health Inequalities Workshops

This is a practical, 2-hour workshop for all Health, Social Care, Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) staff and volunteers in West Yorkshire. The programme is to help Healthcare professionals understand the nature of health inequality, identify patients and communities likely to experience inequality, and deliver evidence-based interventions to reduce the inequality.

For more information, dates and to register, please follow this Eventbrite link.

Health Literacy Awareness Training

The Royal Society of Public Health is conducting awareness training sessions to improve health literacy for people in England.

The session will explore the impact of low levels of health literacy and also signpost to helpful resources to enable staff to learn easy to use techniques to improve communication, supporting the understanding of the people they treat and care for. As a result, patients, families and carers will be able to make better health and wellbeing choices.

The sessions are an hour long and via MS Teams. The dates for the sessions are below:

• 26 April 2023, 14:00-15:00 - Book date by 21 April 2023.
• 16 May 2023, 13:00-14:00 - Book date by 11 May 2023.
• 16 June 2023, 12:00-13:00 - Book date by 13 June 2023.

Follow this link to book onto a course.

New Learning Portal from Leeds Health and Care Academy

The Leeds Health and Care Learning Portal is an online platform offering free learning content, training, and development resources to anybody working or volunteering in a health and care role in Leeds, including in the third sector.

Visit the portal to sign up for your free account.

If you have any problems accessing the portal, please contact the Leeds Health and Care Academy via [email protected].

Northern Man Festival 2023

Men’s Health Unlocked Northern Man Festival is a celebration of men’s health and wellbeing, a learning and sharing experience.

The festival will feature a week of activities across the city, culminating in a
showcase event at Leeds Playhouse on Saturday 17 June 2023 – save the date!

About the week

Northern Man Festival coincides with Men’s Health Week nationally, between 12 – 18 June.

More details to follow on what’s happening in Leeds, including how you can be involved and all the events planned for the week. 

Signposting

The New to Leeds website has been updated

In 2017, Leeds City Council's Migration Team commissioned Touchstone and LASSN to produce New to Leeds, a website to help people new to Leeds (mainly people who have migrated, but anyone new) to understand and access services. Its translatable into a number of languages, including Ukrainian and Russian.

Can you recognise when adults are being abused?

Adults often suffer abuse or neglect because they do not know it is abuse and how to get help to be safe.

Leeds Safeguarding Adults Board has made a short 5-min video to raise public awareness on abuse.

We all have a role to play in keeping informed, recognising abuse and helping when needed.

This video is available in English, BSL and with subtitles in some community languages.

New neurodiversity information hub launched - MindMate

MindMate has launched a new Neurodiversity information hub, a one-stop site to support all neurodivergent children, young people and their families in Leeds.

This online resource is designed to provide information and support for those WITH and WITHOUT formal diagnoses. Autism and ADHD are the main neurotypes covered.

The site covers a huge range of topics including:

• What is neurodiversity? (with sections on autism and ADHD)
• Daily living and keeping safe
• Education and neurodiversity
• Gender and neurodiversity, and more...
  

Please do explore and share with families, patients and colleagues.

There will be more Neurodiversity (ND) Hub information coming soon, including postcards and posters to help share the resource with others. If you’d like any more information about the ND Hub, please contact [email protected].

Emergency Alerts - 23 April

Emergency Alerts is a UK government service that will warn people if there’s a danger to life nearby. A UK-wide test is set to take place on the evening of Sunday 23 April.

The test is likely to last for up to 10 seconds and you may be unable to use your mobile until you have acknowledged the message. This is a test and you will not need to take any action.

Information about the test and possible messaging can be found here and on the .Gov website.

Voter ID Partner Pack

The Electoral Commission has created various Partner Packs to help organisations that are working with groups that are more likely to experience barriers in preparing for changes around voter ID and may need support to access photo ID. They include packs related to:

• Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities
• Older People
• People Experiencing Homelessness
• Trans and Non Binary People
• Blind and Partially Sighted People
• Deaf People (BSL translated videos available)

Give a Hoot! Make an Owl

MindWell is inviting people aged 60+ to take part in their Give a Hoot! campaign.

Get creative and share your hopes, dreams and expectations for the future by making an owl to add to a ‘wish tree’, which will be on display at Leeds Playhouse between 24 April – 6 May as part of the 1001 Stories event, a takeover by older people.

So long as it fits in the palm of your hand, you can create your owl using whatever materials you can find or have lying around at home. Crochet, painted, hand-drawn or origami – the more creative, the better. It’s also a great activity for creative groups.

Visit MindWell’s Give A Hoot! Campaign page to find out how you can get involved.

Voice and Influence

Leeds Self-Neglect Strategy

Karen Sykes from Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust and Philip Bramson from Advonet would very much like feedback on the Leeds Self-Neglect Strategy from COIN members. Karen is leading the consultation on the Strategy on behalf of the Safeguarding Adults Board. The Board is looking at learning from the deaths of people who, in difficult situations, weren’t able to take care of themselves and didn’t ask for help, or refused help from others. She wants to come up with actions that can make a meaningful difference to people’s lives, so other people won’t end up isolated and at risk. The board is keen to be citizen-led and for the strategy to be more than ‘a piece of paper’. The types of areas they want to look at are:

• The need for information to be accessible.
• The Deaf community having access to BSL interpreters at the time when they need them, and not having to wait longer than other members of the community.
• How to identify who is at risk; how do the people that are not already under a service get help?
• There can be a huge stigma around seeking support. The keys to this might be greater community awareness, taking a citywide approach and looking at the question of whether we are compassionate neighbours.
• Some clients do not want help and have the mental capacity to make what others might consider unwise choices.
• Workers need time to build a rapport; time that is not always available to them in the current climate.

If you would like to feed in information or experiences related to the Strategy, particularly around the points above, please contact Philip Bramson on [email protected].

Improving your community’s experience of end-of-life care

Healthwatch in West Yorkshire is doing a project to find out more about people’s experiences of end-of-life care. To do this, they want to speak to as many people as they can about their experience, whether they are getting end-of-life care themselves or they know someone who is or has. They are particularly keen to speak with people who perhaps haven’t had their voices acted on in the past, such as people with protected characteristics or people with experience of homelessness or the criminal justice system.

Anyone they speak to in person or on the phone for this project will be rewarded for their time, and they can make a donation to third-sector organisations that help them reach out to people.

If you know people who might be interested in taking part or you would like to find out more, please contact Anna on 0113 898 0035 or [email protected].

Alternatively, a link to the survey is available here. Please feel free to share it with all your contacts.

Brain Health Research Network Workshop - 20 April

Facilitators from the School of Health at Leeds Beckett are hosting a workshop to discuss how brain health researchers and VCSE currently engage with each other.

They aim to share findings from two virtual workshops held with VCSE members and brain health researchers, and to develop guidelines together to support collaborations.

Who is invited? There are two populations invited for this workshop:

1. Representatives who work in VCSE who support members of the community who are often under-represented in research (as identified by National Institute for Health and Care Research INCLUDE guidelines e.g. ethnic minorities, women, older adults)

2. Researchers engaged in brain health research.

The event is free and tickets can be booked through Eventbrite.

Funding

Smallwood Trust Women's Urgent Support Fund

The Women’s Urgent Support Fund is being supported by over £3.2 million from The National Lottery Community Fund. This will be awarded in grants to 60 small, local community organisations led by and serving women, enabling 20,000 women to access vital specialist support services over five years.

Round 1 of the Fund will launch in April and will prioritise emergency funding for women’s sector organisations, enabling them to respond to the spike in demand for urgent and basic needs from women who are most at risk of poverty.

Smallwood Trust will be announcing more information as this progresses. Please keep up to date with their website and Twitter account for further details.

Next Bulletin

The next bulletin will going out in June. The deadline for content will be the 7th June 2023.

Please get in touch if you want to share any organisational updates, events or signposting information with the network by emailing [email protected].