The purpose of the MSE Winter plan is to set out how Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership will inform and engage local people, stakeholders and partners about how they can stay safe and well during this winter. This winter will include unique pressures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is also a requirement as an STP to provide assurance to national bodies of the communications arrangements for providing a collective and co-ordinated response to periods of intense demand on individual A&E services, and for identifying key clinical spokespeople and system leaders who are appropriately media trained.

The Partnership’s winter plan is aligned to and reflects the three phases of the national NHS ‘Help Us Help you’ campaign:

• Access - Addressing barriers that are deterring patients accessing the NHS across a range of conditions to establish and embed a culture of early presentation and diagnosis. Particularly cancer, maternity services & elective appointments and signalling GP access from home
• Flu - Maximising uptake of the flu vaccination programme
• Pressures - Managing pressures and safety by changing how patients access NHS services for example through the new NHS 111 service to book A&E and encouraging patients to stay clear if they have norovirus and make more use of pharmacies.

This plan has been drafted in collaboration with all our partners, who will share responsibility for promoting priority national and local messages through a wide range of communications and engagement channels and techniques. Communications leads from across the partnership have identified activities that can be jointly planned and delivered, including system-wide campaign announcements, winter escalation pressures and a collective schedule of themed awareness-raising events and dates. All Partnership leads will continue to link in with local resilience forums, such as the Essex Resilience Forum over the EU Exit and other appropriate wider system organisations and networks. In addition, the Partnership will engage with relevant voluntary organisations to amplify messaging at local level. This collaborative approach minimises risk and optimises the use of resources, effort and communications impact across the Partnership.

Download the documents below to find out more.