‘We’ve been a very different CCG and I’m proud of that’: Emma Latimer

Emma Latimer, Accountable Officer of NHS Hull Clinical Commissioning Group. Pictures by Tom Arran Commercial Photography

NHS Hull CCG has been a pioneering health organisation alongside its statutory role of commissioning local health services. Simon Bristow spoke to its departing boss Emma Latimer

A woman who has helped lead Hull’s drive to become a healthier city is leaving her post after 12 years as part of a shake-up in the NHS.

Emma Latimer, Accountable Officer of NHS Hull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), is to become Executive Director of Place, in Sheffield, a new health and care partnership operating within one of the new Integrated Care Systems set to replace the soon to be abolished CCGs.

She will also serve on the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board.

Emma said of the move: “Sheffield is an exciting city and I’m looking forward to working with partners there to improve health and wellbeing outcomes, but it’s bitter-sweet because I’ve loved working in Hull. I fell in love with the people.”

An indication of how effective she has been, and how sorely she will be missed, came with the many messages of goodwill and thanks she has received from Hull MPs and other public sector leaders in the city since her departure became known.

There have been many accomplishments, including Hull being named CCG of the year in 2017, but perhaps her greatest legacy is how Hull has learned to address health needs differently under her leadership.

The changes Emma’s CCG have sought to bring about have been cultural, educational, and behavioural. It is not every CCG that would have funded the arts or boxing sessions for young people, but Hull’s did, as it strived to extend its influence on citizen’s lives beyond its normal interaction with health services like GP practices and hospitals.

And always it has been about reach, trying to extend support to all sections of the community, including those whose engagement with services has historically been low.

“My vision was creating a healthier Hull,” said Emma. “I’ve always operated by trying to address the wider determinants of health. Have people got good jobs, skills, education, housing? – that’s health and wellbeing. Access to primary care is actually a small part of what makes people healthy.

“Health starts at home – it doesn’t start in hospital. So I’ve put a lot of effort into building relationships with public sector partners, fire, local authorities, the police, the ambulance service. The voluntary sector plays a role too.”

‘My vision was creating a healthier Hull’

She also highlighted work with private sector partners, which was about “making sure we’ve got better infrastructure in the city.”

Those partnerships have included professional sports clubs, such as “brilliant relationships with Hull KR and Hull FC”, and “trying to get into every corner of the city to understand what matters to people”.

One aspect of this has been to empower communities to deliver their own programmes, with the CCG giving them the tools and resources to make things happen at grassroots level.

An example is the Hull Champions initiative, which now has 150 members.

Emma said: “When I was a child there was always somebody in your street who knew about everything. I wanted to create a world where there’s someone on a street that people can go to for advice and support if they don’t feel comfortable going to statutory services.

“We have 150 members now. Between them they speak over 40 different languages, they come from different parts of Hull and have different interests, and often represent what people call ‘hard to reach’ but I call easy to ignore sections of the population.”

She added: “We wanted to go deeper into our communities to understand what matters to them, and how we can enable them to have healthier, happier lives, and we’ve done lots of work on that.

“We’ve had small grants, a Healthier Hull Communities Fund, participatory budgeting, where we ask people for their ideas about what would make them healthier. For children who can’t afford bicycles we enlisted a company who restored bikes and gave them to kids in need. Craft, dance, cooking – things we’d never have thought of within the four walls of our office.

“The community decided what projects they wanted and it was brilliant to see people in their communities owning and supporting them. It was a way in which we were starting to understand what matters to people, and people are very connected to their street and their part of Hull, and we had to recognise that in some way.”

The CCG sponsored a local boxing academy so children under 16 could go for free. Emma said: “If you can get 10, 20 kids over two years going and seeing the benefits of exercise, that changes their life.”

‘We have done things differently, because if you keep doing the same things you get the same outcomes’

Hull CCG has also supported the merger of some GP practices to remove a potential vulnerability in provision by having smaller practices, and now brings together 32 across the city.

Emma said: “We had 57 GP practices and some were single-handed, and that put a lot of pressure on a practice. As the practices have started to work together it builds more resilience in the system. Where we are, we are so under-doctored – the second or third lowest rate of GPs per head in England. But our practices work incredibly hard to find solutions for patients through other disciplines, like practice nurses and pharmacists.”

The CCG supported Hull’s landmark year as UK City of Culture in 2017.

“We invested in City of Culture,” Emma said. “It was really important. I thought the number of events happening - there was a massive reach to communities we’d never reached and there’s a lot of evidence that links arts and culture to health.”

Another intervention saw the CCG step in to support Ennerdale Leisure Centre when it was at risk of closure eight years ago due to financial pressures. This led to BBC Radio Humberside presenter David Burns [‘Burnsy’] referring to Emma as “the woman who saved the swimming baths”.

Perhaps one of the most significant and enduring legacies of the CCG Emma leaves behind is the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre in east Hull, which has transformed the treatment and experience of one of the most vulnerable groups in Hull; the elderly.

Opened in 2018 by the woman it was named after in honour of her tireless fundraising, the centre takes a holistic approach to the care of older people, bringing different services under one roof.

“One of the biggest issues was our most frail population were often going into hospital because often their multiple health needs,” Emma said. “So we used an electronic frailty index and we found the top three to five per cent of our most frail population in the city.

‘My personal values align with those of the NHS’

“The centre is led by community geriatricians. We’ve got GPs in there, pharmacists, occupational health, carers, social workers, mental health, and voluntary services working together. There’s also a community café there.

“GPs refer their most frail patients to the Jean Bishop Centre, where they get a full day assessment and from that a plan that will be followed up within two or three days. It has completely transformed the way we deal with our frail population. The stories that come out of there are heart-warming.”

She added: “My only regret is we didn’t do it sooner.

“They get everything in one place, so they don’t get moved around the system. We had every national director come and look at it. It’s the kind of care I would want for my family, my friends.

“As a result of the ICC, there’s been a 29 per cent reduction in people being admitted to ED [emergency department] and a reduction of 19 per cent of over-85s being admitted to ED, which is huge, because the last thing you want is for your elderly, frail relative to be going into hospital if they don’t need to.”

Emma, who was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Lancashire, joined the NHS in January 1990 as a clerical officer in Preston.

She said: “I was a clerical officer in an office of 13 women, making all the brews, doing all the filing. There was a pecking order. I walked half a mile every day to get breakfast from the canteen, filed five copies of purchase orders and you had to file them all. It was the days of typewriters.”

She then moved into NHS supplies and buying, and the organisation she has so faithfully served supported her as she began rapidly rising through the ranks.

Emma said: “The NHS is an anchor institution, an organisation that is able to support its employees to learn, so I was able to get my further education supported by the NHS. I wouldn’t have been able to get the qualifications I have if it wasn’t for the NHS supporting me, because I wasn’t in a position to afford the education.”

She added: “My personal values align with those of the NHS; that it is free at the point of use for anybody. It doesn’t discriminate against race, background, or social status. If you get knocked down outside here it doesn’t matter where you’re from you’ll still get treatment, and that’s really important for me.”

‘Hull is a special place and I’ve been lucky to work with some incredible people’

The experience and leadership skills Emma has amassed during her career have been in demand elsewhere. She has also been interim AO for North Lincolnshire CCG for the last five years, and interim AO for East Riding CCG for three.

She said: “North Lincolnshire was in special measures in Autumn 2017 and I was asked to go in and support it moving forward, which I did. It went from being rated inadequate to good in two years. That’s not just about me; that’s about my team.”

Asked if she ever manages to switch off, Emma said: “Not very often, no. At the end of the day this is a vocation.”

There is emotion in her voice when she is asked about the colleagues she has worked with at the CCG, now and previously.

“They are just amazing,” she said. “It’s the joint vision, the bravery and the courage.”

“Where we have got a population that’s deprived and has health inequalities we’ve got to be the voice for them. My job has always been to look out, not to look in, and I always try to pick the people with the right expertise. If you go out to bat, you’re not batting for yourself you’re batting for the people of Hull, and you want the best possible people with you.

“I’ve been very lucky to have an outstanding executive team alongside me. They’ve got empathy and compassion. The most important person here is Karina [Karina Hurst, receptionist] because she’s the first person somebody comes into contact with at the CCG.”

She added: “When I was younger I didn’t think I’d get a good job but I worked hard and had some brilliant people who helped me along the way. It’s been a brilliant opportunity to try to improve people’s lives and my staff here have adopted that culture.

“I feel I’ve been so lucky to work with some incredible people. I fell in love with Hull very quickly because the people in Hull are some of the best people I’ve ever met. There’s that resilience, that awareness. Anybody who comes here will see what a fabulous community it is.”

Emma is due to take up her new post on July 1.

• NHS Hull CCG is an ‘outstanding’ rated, clinically-led health care organisation that works in close partnership with GP practices, providers of health services, local government, the local public sector, local voluntary and carer groups, patient representatives and the general public. Its 32 local GP practices serve the local registered patient population of over 300,000 people across the city. It aspires to excellence in everything it does in order to deliver its vision of Creating a Healthier Hull.