Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust offers a number of health services including physical and mental health to people who live in a large and diverse geographical area. Whilst the central services of the organisation are based in Doncaster, given city status in 2022,  the locality of Doncaster also includes a rural population of over 14%.

Services delivered to families in Rotherham range from those based in the former industrial town to villages and rural locations. 9.5% of people in Rotherham live in a rural location.

Let us tell you about one of our places in more detail about its rurality: that’s North Lincolnshire. As of 2021, North Lincolnshire is the ninth least densely populated of Yorkshire and The Humber's 21 local authority areas, with around one person living on each football pitch-sized area of land. It is amongst the lowest 25% across England’s Local Authority areas for population density. In North Lincolnshire as a whole, areas have been classified into three groups depending on their population characteristics as follows:

• More than half (57%) of the resident population lives in ‘Urban city or town’, principally Scunthorpe but also part of Barton Upon Humber.
• Slightly over a quarter (28%) live in ‘Rural town or fringe’ such as Brigg, Burton Upon Slather or Epworth.
• One in seven (15%) live in a ‘Rural village and dispersed’ area.

In 2023 RDaSH, as we’re known informally, confirmed that we were committing to 28 Promises to the people who live and work in our communities, to the people who access our services and those of us that work in them. The intention of the promises is that the trust becomes a community partner and engages in collaborative and meaningful ways.

Promise 12   Work with community organisations and primary care teams to better recognise and respond to the specific needs of the rural communities and villages that we serve.

We chose this Promises consciously and deliberately: we know that rural communities can miss out on key health services due to issues such as transport and digital access. We also know that nurturing the power of communities and working with others will be key to sustained success.  

Our work on this promise started in North Lincolnshire where we’ve scoped out the public health data for the communities that we work in and as a starting point we are going to be using the mental health section of the Rural Communities Health Toolkit. We are planning to work with other organisations as well to work though the questions in the toolkit, see what we have in place and work to fill the gaps. A particular community and service will be our starting point in each of Rotherham, Doncaster and North Lincolnshire respectively. We'll then use the learning from the approach and findings in how we can apply to all our rural communities.    

We know this is the start and would be happy to learn from and share with others our journey as well as yours.