In a recent speech, Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb, stressed the importance of integrated care and the ‘integration pioneers’ who are leading the way.
He said,
Too often people in our country experience failures of care. Not because health and care professionals lack skill or compassion. Not because of money. But because health and care services are uncoordinated, sometimes uncommunicative, and centred around what suits organisations and structures, rather than what helps people lead good lives.
If we want to deliver care which meets the needs of the patient, if we truly want person-centred care, if we truly want to protect our NHS for the future, new coordinated ways of working are the only answer.
By that I mean health and care services joined together, providing support to people who need it the most. That could be helping an elderly person living independently at her family home through technology. Or it could be helping people who regularly turn to A&E services because of a long term condition to be more supported at home, to prevent them reaching crisis point.
Read more about the 14 pioneering integrated care initiatives
Relevant resources
- Guidance for commissioners of services for people with medically unexplained symptoms
- Integrated approach to identifying and assessing Carer health and wellbeing
- Five Year Forward View for Mental Health
- Distinctive, Valued, Personal: Why Social Care Matters – The Next Five Years
- Future in mind – promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing
- A commissioner’s guide to primary care mental health
- Commissioning better CAMHS in the South West
- Community mental health profiles
- No assumptions: a narrative for personalised, coordinated care and support in mental health
- Developing effective holistic services for young people
Relevant projects
- Sunderland psychological wellbeing service
- Whittington Health, the integrated care organisation
- Greenwich Joint Emergency Team
- Severe Mental Illness and physical health project
- Stronger Barnsley Together initiative
- Integrated mental health care in South Devon and Torbay
- Caring Together in Eastern Cheshire
- Living independent lives in North West London
- Putting good health into practice in Nottingham