Following the success of last year’s event, the Leeds Health and Care Academy is pleased to announce the Leeds People Festival 2023!

Date: Wednesday 21st June
Venue: Stanningley Rugby Club, Arthur Miller Stadium, Coal Hill Drive, Leeds, LS13 1PA. Tel: 0113 2560847 – Lunch provided
Across Leeds we have a wealth of health and care experience, knowledge and expertise, and last year’s virtual festival helped to connect staff from a wide range of teams and organisations, and offered attendees the opportunity to celebrate their work, share learning and build a peer network.
Building on last year’s event, Leeds People Festival 2023 will be held in-person and offers an exciting opportunity for you to establish new connections, network and share good practice with other Leeds-based colleagues, as well as focusing on your continued professional development.
There will be workshops run by two fantastic speakers:

Dr Andrew McDowell, Psychologist and Coach, TPC Health.
Dr Andrew McDowell is a psychologist, coach and leadership professional with more than 30 years’ experience. He is pioneering the development of Coaching and Leadership interventions for clinical and care environments, supporting practitioners and multidisciplinary teams to adopt a coaching oriented approach in their work. He has led the development of Health Coaching in the UK, including conducting the NHS’s largest Health Coaching programmes, which combine the development of coaching skills with behaviour change techniques to support people to become more self-managing.
Workshop: Developing your facilitation skills using a coaching approach
Developing effective facilitation skills, and having the confidence to use them in a variety of situations, is a highly valuable attribute. This workshop will provide colleagues with an opportunity to learn how they can offer facilitation processes using the principles of coaching, and how this approach can support the engagement and motivation of facilitation participants.
Content will include:
- An overview of the coaching approach
- Understanding how to structure facilitation processes using the principles of coaching
- Discussion with colleagues about some of the common challenges associated with facilitation
- The opportunity to think through and plan a facilitation process using a coaching approach

Dr Penny Netherwood, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust.
Dr Penny Netherwood has worked as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist for over 20 years in the NHS, within services for children, young people and families. She is the health co-lead within a new multi-agency integrated team working to develop trauma-informed and adversity-aware practice across services for children, young people and families in Leeds.
Workshop: Handle with Care: why developing a trauma-informed approach is important for us all
Working with people in any capacity means that we will be encountering the impact of trauma. This trauma response could be within the people we provide a service for, within our colleagues, within ourselves or even within our organisations. This workshop will increase your awareness of what being trauma informed means and will help you to think about how a trauma informed approach could make a difference in your context. Within the workshop, creating a feeling of safety will be paramount. No one will be expected to share anything they don’t want to or that could be distressing for others to hear.
Content will include:
- How we can see each other as people first
- The role we can all play in making our workplaces and services more compassionate
- The opportunity to reflect on what initial steps you can take towards becoming trauma-informed.
Anybody who works or volunteers in a people-support based role within health and care, at any level, and from any organisation in Leeds is welcome to join us on the day. We particularly encourage those in non-managerial roles and/ or those who have recently joined the sector to attend, to learn and connect with peers.
Example departments/ roles that this event is relevant for include:
- Quality Improvement
- Organisational Development
- Recruitment and Resourcing
- Workforce Planning
- Workforce Information
- Human Resources
- Health and Wellbeing
- Training and Development
- Rostering
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Service Manager
- Team Manager
If you’d like to join us for the Leeds People Festival 2023, please sign-up via the button below. Please note you will need to create an account on the Leeds Health and Care Learning Portal to sign-up. If you have any questions about the event, please email us via LHCA@nhs.net.