Work taking place at NHS trust to reduce impact of poverty on healthcare access

Through its Poverty Proofing programme, the charity has carried out audits of two key services for young people – speech and language therapy and CAMHS (children and adolescent mental health services).

The trust’s maternity service is also working with the charity through a North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board project.

To build on this, Northumbria Healthcare is now working with both organisations on an ambitious delivery partner model, which will see staff trained to help embed poverty proofing in other teams and services alongside a group of influencers to support this agenda.

Dr Kate Hope is a public health speech and language therapist. She is working on some of the suggested actions from the audit of her service.

“The word poverty makes people think of obvious impacts, but it affects people in many different ways,” she said.

“It is a complex problem that will affect different groups in different ways.

“The training delivered to staff had a real impact and made people think much about what they do and how it could impact the children they care for and their families.

“We know how important this is to get right, and we know that we have more to do, but we have made the first steps on this journey to make our service as accessible as it can be for everyone in our communities.”