Community Wealth Building in Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) uses the NHS’ power in the local economy to positively influence the wider social determinants of health.
Context
- LTH has an annual budget of £789m, treats around a million patients a year and employs over 14,000 staff across six main sites.
- Leeds has 114 neighbourhoods (LSOAs) in the most deprived 10% in the UK, with population health generally worse than the England average. The life expectancy gap between the most and least deprived areas of Leeds is 12 and eight years for men and women, respectively.
Community Wealth Building in LTH
Pre-employment with local colleges
LTH have a pre-employment training scheme in place, offering a mixture of work experience and knowledge building. This knowledge building element helps to build confidence in the long term unemployed who, it is felt, often do not apply for roles within the Trust because job descriptions ask for competency in maths and English.
Promoting NHS careers in schools from deprived areas
LTH have a number of health career ambassadors and staff who go into schools and offer a programme of work experience to enable young people to directly observe the work that takes place in the Trust. They identified that the initial uptake of work experience placements came from younger people in more affluent areas, so they have started to specifically target schools in more deprived postcodes to redress the balance.
Priority neighbourhoods
LTH has been working with Leeds City Council to build career opportunities for local residents through its priority neighbourhood programme. This initiative uses local data to develop ‘neighbourhood profiles’ to help target opportunities and investments towards Leeds’ most deprived areas. For example, Lincoln Green is home to many people who have recently emigrated to the UK and struggle with employability. LTH worked with the council to promote routes into careers and run language courses to tackle in work poverty in the area. LTH employ a higher than average share of employees from the 20% most deprived areas of the city relative to its employment trends across the city as a whole, indicating the success of the programme.
