Moving forward with health and social care integration

6 Jun 17

Sharing best practice on how to integrate health and social care successfully can be difficult. A CIPFA webinar aims to address this and put the spotlight on Plymouth’s pioneering work

Integration of services between health and social care is now firmly enshrined in public policy. It provides one of the key building blocks of sustainable health and care planning for our growing and ageing population. 

Without a firm national blueprint to follow, local areas are developing different approaches to tackling this issue and, whilst there are some excellent examples, the learning involved is not widely shared. This leads to duplication of effort and missed opportunities. In some instances, particularly where there is a history of poor relationships, progress has been slow.

CIPFA believes that finance professionals have a key role in taking integration forward. At one extreme, traditional risk-averse attitudes can make financial systems and rules become the reason for blocking potential suggestions, whilst at the other extreme progressive systems can often have finance leading the way.  The health and social care integration category at our recent Public Finance Innovation Awards featured a range of progressive ideas, showing in particular how working together on finance and commissioning can really progress the agenda, while at the same time enhancing roles for finance staff and generating better value for money for the system.

To that end, we’re holding a webinar on 14 June to look at this issue and see how finance teams can maximise their contribution.

We’re delighted that David Northey from the integration award winners, Integrated Health and Wellbeing Team, Plymouth City Council and Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, will be joining the webinar to talk about their innovative approach to joint working between their local government and NHS commissioning finance teams.

Their innovative work covers not only health and social care funding but also leisure, housing and children’s services, giving a combined total of £428m. The Plymouth team has found innovative ways of working that mitigate financial, organisational and systemic risks, especially important at a time of reducing budgets.

Indeed, the PF Innovation Award Judges’ comments reflect how organisations across the country could benefit from their fresh approach and its potential to be adopted by others. “We were impressed by the risk-sharing approach, which can be shared by others. The team’s ambitious integration programme included an important role for financial leadership and solutions”.

So join us on the 14 June to hear about this partnership approach which has helped the council and the CCG to come in on budget and achieve praise from auditors.

Register for CIPFA's FREE webinar on how finance teams can drive integration

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