The need for engagement with health and social care staff is seen as a significant enabler for the Humber, Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership to deliver on its aims for our communities.
What’s more it’s an important element of the NHS Long Term Plan, which states that:
“(Integrated Care Systems) are a pragmatic and practical way of delivering the ‘triple integration’ of primary and specialist care, physical and mental health services, and health with social care, consistent with what doctors report is needed.”
With that in mind, the Partnership’s Clinical Engagement Programme was launched in October last year.
The programme’s over-arching aim is to make meaningful and trustworthy collaboration across organisational boundaries to promote a way of engaging clinicians and social care professionals to improve service quality and patient experience across Humber, Coast and Vale.
The programme also has the following objectives:
- To create workforce advocates for the Integrated Care System’s aims and aspirations.
- To put frontline staff at the centre of the operation, design and quality improvement of services.
- To promote and drive the integration of services across whole pathways.
- To increase the levels of trust and collaboration between our organisations.
A number of clinical engagement workshops were held during the final few months of 2019 and during the first few weeks of 2020, and I’m pleased to report that the workshops were very well supported and the enthusiasm and energy was inspiring.
The programme has also been supported by the NHS Accelerator Programme which has boosted our work and propelled us into the next phase. We now have a set of proposals to take to the Executive Team of the Partnership, which is on track to become an Integrated Care System this summer.
We want to build a frontline network that is connected to the Partnership’s aims and objectives, which ultimately helps to ensure the services we offer in our region are collaboratively provided and centred around our communities and patients.
Through the engagement activity we have seen that there are multiple clinical networks already doing great work within our region and we would want to support their work going forward.
So thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy schedules to take part in these workshops. From the feedback we received, at the workshops and from the survey we sent to health and social care we have a sense that the time for your involvement in the further development of services both locally and across our region has arrived.