Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust pledge to the Equally Well Charter:

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is extremely proud to add its name to Equally Well UK’s Charter for Equal Health. As a provider of specialist mental health and learning disability services, we know that people living with mental illness and learning disability are at a higher risk of developing physical health problems, and we are committed to a holistic approach to patient care.

We pledge to support our service users to improve their physical health through the work of all our staff.

We have a number of specialist services and roles within the Trust including our Healthy Living Service, Physical Health Monitoring and Improvement Team and Health Facilitation Team. Our Healthy Living Service includes dietitians, physiotherapists, speech and language therapist, healthy living advisors and a health improvement specialist, who will continue to provide tailored assessments and interventions and support our service users to access the most up-to-date, relevant and high quality healthy lifestyle resources within the community.

We are also committed to the continued development of our ‘easy on the i’ easy-read resources, which are designed to support people with learning disabilities to get the best from their health care, and we’re working with partners on projects including adapting hearing tests so they’re better suited to people with a learning disability, and supporting our service users with mobility and exercise issues.

We will strive to make continuous improvements in this area by developing partnerships with community providers, learning from others and sharing our successes within the Equally Well UK network.

Pledged in August 2021

Joanna Forster Adams, Chief Operating Officer at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “No-one with mental illness should be at a disadvantage when it comes to physical health. We are delighted to be working with like-minded organisations to tackle this issue and effect positive change.”