Oxford Health's five-year plan names Oxford City, Banbury and Abingdon for health gaps and promises simpler, joined-up care. What changes, and how to read it.
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs mental health, community health and learning disability services across Oxfordshire, has published a new five-year strategy. It names Oxford City, along with parts of Banbury and Abingdon, as the places in the county where people’s health is furthest behind the average.
The strategy runs from 2026 to 2031. Its stated vision is for the trust’s teams to “support every person to achieve their best quality of life through compassionate and evidence-based care informed by research”. The full document and an Easy Read version are on the trust’s strategy page.
The trust says the plan focuses on three changes people told it they want to see: care shaped around what matters to them, simpler and more joined-up services across health and care, and a greater focus on reducing inequalities in health and care.
What the strategy says about Oxfordshire
In a section on the places it serves, the trust writes that “people in Oxfordshire live longer than average, but this hides clear inequalities, particularly in Oxford City, parts of Banbury and Abingdon”.
It adds that the county’s population is growing and ageing, with more people living with dementia, cancer and heart disease; that some children and families face deprivation, fuel poverty and problems with housing and getting to services; and that as one of the most rural counties in the South East, access is a particular problem.
Its answer, in the trust’s words: “We need to better coordinate our mental health, learning disability and community health services to focus on communities with poorer outcomes, using a neighbourhood health and care approach to improve access and help people stay well as they live longer.”
The document also gives a picture of the trust’s work in 2025/26. Its health visitors in Oxfordshire supported more than 37,000 families with children aged up to five, and worked with more than 7,000 families who needed extra or specialist help. Across all the areas it covers, its mental health teams supported more than 57,000 people with a severe mental illness, and community nursing teams cared for around 250 adults a month at the end of life at home.
The six priorities
The strategy sets three aims, for patients and families, for communities, and for the people who work at the trust, and six priorities beneath them:
- Co-produce care: work with patients, carers, families and communities on their care and on outcomes that mean something to them.
- Make things simple: simplify processes and systems, both for patients and for staff.
- Collaborate with partners: work with other organisations, and lead where the trust is best placed.
- Address health inequalities: identify them and support the people most at risk of poor health.
- Foster an inclusive culture: so all staff feel safe, valued and respected at work.
- Use knowledge to improve care: continuous improvement backed by lived experience, innovation and research.
The trust says the plan also answers the Government’s 10-year health plan for England and its three shifts: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.
What patients told the trust
The strategy was shaped in two rounds of engagement that the trust says reached more than 1,000 people. That included 60 strategy conversations with staff, seven sessions with an Expert by Experience group, a public survey, a focus group with young people and parents, and a public webinar run with Healthwatch Oxfordshire and Healthwatch Buckinghamshire. Oxfordshire’s and Buckinghamshire’s health scrutiny committees were also consulted.
What it heard was not all comfortable. People described trouble getting into services, finding their way through care and “having to repeat their stories”. The document prints examples of how people feel when the trust gets it wrong, based on that feedback, including: “Because I’m being treated for multiple conditions, from lots of services, I can feel like I’m ‘too complicated’ to deal with,” and “I gave feedback on how my care could be improved, but three years later, I see the same mistakes still happening.”
The trust says it has responded by putting reducing waits and health inequalities alongside joining up care, and by making co-production one of its six priorities.
What the chief executive said
Dr Michael Holland, the trust’s chief executive, said: “I am very pleased that one of my first actions as CEO is to launch a strategy which seeks to make a clear difference to people’s quality of life.
“I want us to be ambitious about the role we can play in our communities and for people who access our services to improve the experience of the care we provide and outcomes for all. This strategy gives us a clear direction for doing this together.”
The trust thanked everyone who helped shape the plan and said launching it “is just the beginning and cannot be delivered on our own”. It says it will work with patients, families, carers, communities and partners to turn the priorities into action.
How progress will be checked
A five-year Strategy Delivery Plan will turn the strategy into annual plans for each team. The trust says it will report progress to its Board every six months, so updates will appear in the published Board papers.
The trust employs around 7,700 people across about 150 sites, serving around two million people in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, and Bath and North East Somerset.
You can read the full strategy (PDF) and the Easy Read version (PDF) on the trust’s website.
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