Integration Pioneers to lead the way for better joined up care

Care and Support minister Norman Lamb has announced 14 pioneering initiatives which will lead the way in joining up health and social care throughout the country.
Picked from 111 applications, the 14 pioneers chosen will work to integrate health and care services to provide better support at home and earlier treatment in the community.

It is hoped integrated care will prevent more people needing emergency care in hospitals or care homes.

Mr Lamb said:“Too often care is uncoordinated, leaving too many people needlessly entering the revolving door of their local A&E again and again, because somewhere in the system their care has broken down.

“We have heard people talk about integration before, but it has never truly taken hold across the NHS. These pioneers are a starting gun for the NHS and social care to achieve a common goal – to get local health and care services working together, not separately, in the interests of the people that they all serve.

“However, this is just the start – we want to make integrated care the norm across the country and planning has already begun in order to invest £3.8bn into integrated health and care services in 2015/16. “We need to preserve the NHS, and through an integrated approach we can achieve better results for patients and make the money go further, whilst making necessary savings. These fourteen pioneers will test new ways of working for everyone to learn from, and drive forward genuine change for the future.

The pioneers will be sharing their initiatives which have improved coordinated care and were selected by a panel of experts with experience of how successful joined up care works in practice internationally.

With proven success in reducing waiting times and patient admissions into hospitals, the integration pioneers will share their experiences with other services to help areas all across the country deliver integrated care and support.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “I want to build a fairer society and that means providing better care to people in our hospitals, care homes and their own homes. We need to join up care around people’s lives, not force them to fit their lives around the care they need. The pioneers will champion this joined up approach, sharing their good ideas with doctors and nurses across the country so that we get better care in every area.”

The Department of Health will also support and advise pioneers as they work to understand why a variety of issues in the past obstructed integration working for the NHS.

These findings will form a basis to guide local authorities on how to be spending their proportion of the £3.8bn Integration Transformation Fund (ITF) which was announced by Chancellor George Osbourne at the Spending Review in June of this year.

Councils are set to receive the ITF in April 2015.

The announcement has been welcomed by many people within both the health sector and social care sector, including Sandie Keene, president of the Association for Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS)

Ms Keene said:“Today’s announcement of the Integration Pioneers is a landmark day which will be remembered as one which heralds a new social and health care services journey leading to far more seamless services for all people within their localities. It will bring better delivery, better satisfaction and better value than ever before.

Overall nearly 100 authorities bid for Pioneer status, but of those not chosen many will have been deemed to have been too far down the road already; and others will only narrowly have missed out on what was a wide range of very exacting criteria indeed. Lessons from all those authorities will still make vital contributions to our growing knowledge and understanding of the complexities of integration.”

Sally Warren, director of programmes at Public Health England, said: “Successful integration can support people to stay well and independent, and can ensure that if they are unwell they have services shaped around their needs. Public Health England are committed to supporting the pioneers in leading the way in integrating health and care, along with other services that can have a huge impact on people’s health and wellbeing such as housing, transport and preventative services, such as smoking cessation or nutrition advice.”

Lord Michael Bichard, executive chair, Social Care Institute for Excellence said:“There is broad consensus from people who use, provide and commission services that more integrated care is better and more cost effective. The challenge now is how to do it well. The Social Care Institute for Excellence welcomes the opportunity to support and learn from the integration pioneers. In particular, we will share our knowledge about how to tackle the barriers to integration through our new online tool – Integration: step by step.”

Jeremy Hughes,chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society said: “This promise of joined up working in health and social care is encouraging and dementia has rightly been highlighted as a priority, but we can’t ignore the fact that social care services are still drastically underfunded.

“Many people with dementia rely as much on social care as they do on the NHS. Better care and support packages to help them remain in the community for as long as possible can’t come soon enough.”

The areas in which the 14 pioneers have been chosen are: Barnsley, Cheshire, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, Greenwich, Islington, Leeds, Kent, North West London, North Staffordshire, South Devon and Torbay, Southend, South Tyneside, Waltham Forest and East London and City and Worcestershire.