In Leeds, approximately 57,000 people work in health and care. We have some of the most skilled and passionate teams in the world, and the skills and experience of these people are making a real difference. By working even better together as one health and social care team, we can make a bigger difference to people’s outcomes, as well as improving the experience of service users and increasing the support that we can provide to each other.

Team Leeds Hearts and Minds is a culture change programme, aimed at bringing the health and care workforce in Leeds closer together, and to shape the future of our #TeamLeeds culture. There are already many great examples of Team Leeds in action across our health and care system, you can see some great examples in our Team Leeds Stories series:

In phase one of the programme, we focussed on four key objectives:

• Connecting. Through our Team Leeds Chats hundreds of health and care staff came together to talk, listen and connect with others from across the system. Team Leeds Chats were focussed on experiences of living and working through the pandemic, and experiences of collaborating with others. (Links to the findings of Team Leeds Chats are below).
• Celebrating. We know there are many examples already of people and teams from different parts of the health and care system working together, examples that we can all learn from, and that should be celebrated. Through our Team Leeds Stories, we shone a spotlight on a handful of some of the best examples of Team Leeds in action.
• Communicating. Through our engagement with the workforce one key message dominated the conversation about how to enable partnership working – common purpose. Our common purpose, and our city priority, is to reduce health inequalities and improve outcomes for people. By using various communications channels, we were able to reach thousands of our workforce with these key messages.
• Listening. We undertook the biggest ever whole system listening exercise, with over 1,000 people taking part in our Team Leeds Survey.

Phase one of the programme has now closed, and we are analysing our findings, and reviewing what worked well during our programme, which will help inform the future of the programme.

Team Leeds Hearts and Minds will continue as a programme, enabling our ‘one team’ culture remains a priority. We are already developing new opportunities for collaborative learning, exploring new Team Leeds Stories, and looking for ways to enable our workforce to better connect.

We know that by working even better together, we can make a bigger difference to our workforce and the people of Leeds and drive forward a culture of one health and care team, where reducing health inequalities and improving outcomes remains the priority of us all.

Team Leeds Chats

During the first phase of the Hearts and Minds programme we hosted a series of Team Leeds Chats. They were opportunities for members of the health and care workforce to talk, listen and connect with others. Each of the Chats were themed, and the outcomes of each theme are available through the links below.

• Living and working through the pandemic
• Team Leeds: working even better together
• Unpaid carers experiences of working in health and care
• Pandemic experiences for workforce from ethnically diverse groups
• Leeds health and care learners, practice leads and learning facilitators
• Female workforce in perimenopause and menopausal transition