About us - Year of Care Partnerships

Year of Care Partnerships has been established to incorporate the national Training and Support Team, and all of the resources and learning from the Year of Care Programme, and is now based in Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Its aim is to ‘make care planning’ the norm for everyone with single or multiple long term conditions (LTCs) including diabetes; working via local and national partnerships with clinical teams, commissioners, policy makers, and others with similar aims and objectives.

Year of Care Partnerships, including the national Training and Support Team. To contact the team please complete the enquiries form (Word 693KB) and email it to: enquiries@yearofcare.co.uk

Who we are:

Sue Roberts CBE FRCP, Chair of the Year of Care Partnerships

Sue set up the Year of Care Pilot Project when she was National Clinical Director (Tsar) for Diabetes in the Department of Health and has led the programme throughout.

Previously she worked as a consultant physician for 30 years in acute and long term condition specialities. She pioneering structured and integrated diabetes care and prevention programmes for cardiovascular disease across North Tyneside and Northumberland and has designed services in acute medicine, gastroenterology and endoscopy, nutrition, and health complications of alcohol.

She helped to introduce rigorously evaluated structured education programmes for people with diabetes into the UK. She has long standing interests in, and advises on the commissioning and delivery of patient centred services for people with long term conditions and the mainstream change that is needed to support and embed this. 

Lindsay Oliver, National Director of the Year of Care Partnerships

Lindsay Oliver qualified in 1989 with a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics, and has worked both in a primary and specialist care settings. In 2003, she became the first Consultant Dietitian and used the opportunity to become more involved in the development of self care programmes both at a local and national level, including the development, research and roll out of both the DAFNE and DESMOND diabetes programmes . In addition she has a major interest in communications skills and patient centred care, including the development of innovative approaches to patient care.

She has extensive experience in developing quality assured training and education programmes and in 2009 was seconded to head up the National Training team for the Year if Care Programme. She was appointed to the role of National Director in 2011.

Simon Eaton, National Clinical Lead for the Year of Care Partnerships

Simon is a Consultant Physician and Diabetologist in Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust based at North Tyneside General Hospital.

Simon graduated from Nottingham University in 1993 and took up his Consultant position in Northumbria in July 2003. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2007.  He attained a Doctor of Medicine (DM) in 2003 exploring vascular factors in diabetic neuropathy, followed by a Certificate of Medical Education in 2004. 

Simon has a long standing interest in innovative approaches to enabling people with diabetes to be more involved their healthcare including being national clinical lead for care planning in diabetes, participation in national DESMOND steering group and local lead DAFNE doctor. This culminated in being a member of the local implementation team of the NHS North of Tyne Year of Care pilot and the development and delivery of the national care planning training programme and the Train the Trainers programme.

Simon has also developed a national profile in long term conditions and is the clinical lead for long term conditions for NHS North East. This has included leading an ambitious programme to explore and address the implications for whole scale implementation of care planning across long term conditions.

Lesley Thompson, Trainer and Assessor for the Year of Care Partnerships

Lesley qualified as a nurse in 1989 and after moving from general medicine to the community attained her BSc Hons Community Health Care studies degree. She worked as a District nursing sister in North Tyneside, before pursuing an interest in the specialist area of Diabetes.

She has worked as a Diabetes Specialist nurse, predominately supporting and facilitating the development of diabetes innovation within Northumberland .She has been involved with the implementation of training for professionals and educational programmes for people with diabetes.

A desire to promote patient involvement and self management in long term conditions led to a move to the Year of Care programme, where she has been involved in the production of national training curriculum’s and training delivery. Her interest in training and education continues as Lesley is currently studying for a post graduate qualification in Education at Northumbria University. 

Caroline Sprake MRCP MRCGP, GP advisor to Year of Care Partnership 

Caroline is a local GP in Benton, North Tyneside and Chair of the North Tyneside Long Term Conditions Partnership Board. She has been involved with the Year of Care programme since the pilot phase both as a member of the steering group and as implementer of the programme within her own practice

Having spent 20 years in General Practice where good care for patients with Long Term Conditions is so key it has allowed her to bring both expertise and practicalities of day to day practice to the programme. In her chair role for the local partnership board caroline is now involved in looking how the programme can be embedded in other long term conditions to allow a more generic approach to be taken.

Who are our partners?

Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP): The Year of care programme supported the RCGP in developing their Report: Care Planning, Improving the Lives of People with Long Term Conditions. The College has now appointed a Clinical Lead Dr Isabel Hodkinson to take this work forward.

See: www.rcgp.org.uk/pdf/CIRC%20Bulletin%20January%20Edition%20%28Final%29.pdf

Contact: isabel.hodkinson@nhs.net

Diabetes UK: We are continuing to work with Diabetes UK to spread the  learning and experience from the YOC pilot Programme which they hosted, with a particular emphasis on making care planning the norm for diabetes and delivering standard 3 of the NICE Quality Standards for adults with diabetes by working with people with diabetes and the diabetes professional community.

NHS Diabetes: We are continuing to work with NHS Diabetes who supported the development of the National Training and Support team and rollout of the programme beyond the pilot sites.  They host this website. We are continuing to work with them to spread the learning and experience with a particular emphasis on making care planning the norm for people with diabetes and delivering standard 3 of the NICE Quality Standards for adults with diabetes by supporting the development of a community of practice.

Department of Health LTC QIPP Programme: We are working with this programme to support the self management support stream.

We are also working with a number of programmes within the Department of Health and the Clinical Commissioning Group Network to take forward care planning as the core to delivering services for people with LTCs.