People led care: whose role is it anyway?

• Written by: Des McCart — ihub — Senior Programme Manager, Outcomes Based Commissioning
• Published: 1st March 2019

Des introduces a new role within ihub's Outcomes Based Commissioning team.

The Outcomes Based Commissioning team at the ihub is working with Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), the third and independent sectors and communities to make people led approaches the normal way of working. Our work is about having the right conversation (What Matters to You?), sharing the art of the possible and helping services and communities deliver what works in their local area. We always hope to leave the room with those in it having the confidence to do things differently.

Our work focuses on what happens when we place people at the centre of decision making around their own health and care needs – to be truly focused on delivering what matters to individuals and those who care for them. What does this mean for people first and foremost, what does it mean for those who give formal and informal care and support and how do people in finance, procurement and IT systems adapt their practice to make it all possible?

We look for example at questions like “How do we meet the needs of older people living in our rural communities where the standard provision of care at home is just not possible?”. This means working with national regulatory bodies to identify solutions to barriers in the system, working with HSCPs to build confidence to commission services in different ways and working with the third sector and communities to explore their role in finding and being part of a solution.

The expanding role of the third sector and our community organisations in supporting health and wellbeing is vital and we are helping HSCPs to truly change their commissioning conversations to ensure that these services are resourced and sustainable. We want to ensure services are designed to enable the right support to be provided that can best meet the needs of individuals and communities.

A further key question for us is how do we know what difference this activity makes; is there any impact? We want to capture the story of our work and to share it with people in interesting and genuinely useful ways so that others can understand and relate to it. We also need to keep up to date with new and innovative ideas from all over the world that can help shape our new world of integrated health and social care.

We are currently recruiting for a Knowledge and Information Skills Specialist (closing date 7 March) to help us do this. If you think this could be you then please do check out the details of this job and get in touch (this link will take you away from our website).

Being part of a team who are in a position to work across the whole of Scotland, and even connecting up with places like the Jersey Isles and New Zealand is probably an enviable position to be in. Okay, so we don’t actually travel all the way to New Zealand but connecting to those that do work there is still exciting, interesting an inspiring.

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