Publish date: 14 June 2021
Creating a new Integrated Care Partnership to improve services, outcomes and experience for all borough residents.
Organisations across Sefton are coming together to establish a new health and care partnership that will strengthen the way they work together for the benefit of borough residents.
For some years now we have been working increasingly closely as health and care partners, and this new development will greatly build on our successes so far. It will also help us to deliver our shared aims of both the Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the local five year plan for the NHS, Sefton2gether.
The Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) will bring together Sefton Council, all local NHS, voluntary, community and faith (VCF) groups and other organisations involved in improving health and care in the borough as members of the Health and Wellbeing Board.
Partners in Sefton want to create a more joined up local system that meets the needs of all the people who live in Sefton in line with our shared vision:
“To deliver a confident and connected borough that offers the things we all need to start, live and age well, where everyone has a fair chance of a positive and healthier future.”
From speaking with residents over the past few years – including during the production of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy, Sefton2gether and the council’s 2030 vision – it has been clear that these priorities for future health and care have been important to them too.
There are already many examples of how this approach is beginning to make a difference to the lives of those who live in Sefton, including improvements to intermediate care and care homes, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve care for their residents and provide support for their staff.
Joined up working has also seen the setup of eight Integrated Care Teams (ICTs)ICTs are made up of a wide range services and professionals such as social workers, council locality teams, nurses, GP led primary care network representatives, mental health practitioners and VCF sector professionals. They come together to discuss the differing needs of their cases individually, so each person’s support is more tailored, better co-ordinated across different services and effective.
It means that Sefton’s ICP will be one of nine other ‘places’ that will make up a wider Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS). Here, integrated working between partners across the entire ICS will be made easier through changes set out in the White Paper, with the overall aim of achieving better health and wellbeing for everyone, better quality of health services for all individuals and sustainable use of NHS resources.
As well as joining up and co-ordinating services around people’s needs, Sefton’s ICP will also be focused around understanding and working with communities, addressing social and economic factors that influence health and wellbeing and supporting quality and sustainability of local services.
Sefton’s ICP is beginning to operate in shadow form with the goal of becoming established from April 2022, when it is expected that the White Paper will pass into a Bill and become law from the same date. It will work as part of both Sefton’s Health and Wellbeing Board and the wider Cheshire and Merseyside ICS.