Delivering real change and improvements in South Yorkshire

Overview

Since its establishment in 2022, the South Yorkshire System SPF (SY SPF) has been a fundamental part of governance and decision making in the South Yorkshire Integrated Care System, demonstrating effective partnership working between eight trade unions, eight employers and other key partners, collectively representing approximately 50,000 employees. In just three years, the forum has demonstrated its impact through successes across several key projects, including job evaluation, menopause and system change.

Launching the South Yorkshire SPF

To announce the establishment of SY SPF, a joint statement was issued across the system by co-chairs Christine Joy, chief people officer for South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, and Charlie Carruth, regional organiser for UNISON. This positively endorsed the role and contributions of local trade union representatives and set the tone for the way the system would manage many of its future projects.

What the forum delivers

The forum aligns its focus around national SPF ambitions and structures its agendas around national priorities. Meetings are built around three key themes to focus discussion - staff experience, new ways of working and equality diversity and inclusion.

In early 2024, SY SPF co-designed and rolled out ‘introduction to trade union roles’ sessions across the region. This aimed to embed the role of trade unions system wide and raise the profile of partnership working. As a result, the system increased the number of trade union reps at a local level, in turn strengthening the staff voice in local discussions.

The forum now includes representation from primary care and social care integration. It has proactively sought opportunities for meaningful and impactful work building on these relationships to support delivery and improvements, including the establishment of trade union representatives on the SY Commitment to Carers Board. 

Achievements and successes

• The forum helped raise awareness of the new pathology service for the region and improved the accuracy and timeliness of information shared with colleagues affected by the service reconfiguration.
• SY SPF established a sub-group to tackle priority issues around job evaluation and helped the ICB to successfully build job matching capacity in advance of the launch of the new nursing and midwifery profiles in 2025. SY SPF trained 60 new job matchers over 18 months in preparation for this.
• The forum worked with NHS Wales, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, HPMA and Sheffield University on minimising the impact of organisational change. As part of this, a dedicated SY SPF steering group was set up to research ways to minimise harm caused to staff through organisational change processes. The system’s approach to organisational change has since been adopted by the Yorkshire and Humber SPF.
• SY SPF had a specific focus on supporting staff experiencing menopause. Many of the ICB’s trade union reps are trained menopause advocates.
• SY SPF provides a key forum for discussions around racism and supporting staff who experience racial abuse. The system took the decision not to mandate a set approach on this, to enable organisations to develop their own plans tailored to local needs.
• The strong partnership culture at system level has positively influenced partnership working at a local level through raising awareness and successful efforts to increase the number of local trade union reps.
• Despite the challenging national context during national pay disputes in 2022/23, trade union relationships remained constructive in the region thanks to the forum.

Partnership working: testimonials

"I believe the partnership working in South Yorkshire has been open and honest with a no surprises or blame approach over a number of years. This in turn has increased confidence in the system and allowed colleagues to be more trusting and open, which has enhanced partnership working and led to many joint initiatives which have not only benefitted staff and health and social care employers but the wider community and indeed population across South Yorkshire" – Charlie Carruth, UNISON and SY SPF co-chair.

"The menopause work of SY SPF has been invaluable in raising the profile of menopause in the workplace and providing support for staff in our wellbeing offer. Staff have been most appreciative of the advice and support we can now offer through our partnership working with the ICB, which has also been cascaded to our voluntary sector staff members"– Julie Marsland, UNISON.

"SY SPF provides a forum for staff side and management to jointly tackle challenges affecting the workforce. It is a privilege to work together creating solutions, ensuring our workforce gets the best possible experience, is treated with respect and can advocate well" – Sarah Bawden, deputy director of people at Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Partnership working: lessons learnt

• It is important to be intentional about what work is undertaken in partnership.
• Partnership working is not about agreeing with one another on everything - it is about creating a safe space to disagree and find a way forward together.
• The system’s successes were in part because staff were brought along for each journey, via trade unions, while a top-down approach was avoided.
• Trade union reps have a unique insight into their members’ issues.
• Partnership working supports a culture of no surprises.

Summary

• Embedding the role of trade unions system-wide raised the profile of partnership working across the region, resulting in increased trade union reps at a local level.
• Partnership working has been key to the success of many of South Yorkshire’s system-level projects and initiatives, with some processes and outputs having influence more widely across health and care.
• Aligning forum meeting agendas to the national SPF’s priorities and national issues can be beneficial, while recognising the need to act according to system-specific issues.

Further information

For more information, contact Christine Joy, South Yorkshire ICB chief people officer, Charlie Carruth, UNISON regional organiser for Yorkshire and Humberside or and David Prater, South Yorkshire ICB senior project manager.