New report explores priorities for health and social care integration

The report focuses on Health and Social Care Partnerships’ (HSCPs) strategic plans and annual reports. 

The ALLIANCE Integration and Academy Team has published a new report looking at Health and Social Care Partnerships’ (HSCPs) strategic plans and annual reports. 

Based on a review of a sample of HSCP’s strategic plans and annual reports, this report provides a snapshot of their key priorities for the near and medium-term future.

Every few years, each local Partnership produces its own plan for how it will continue to progress the integration of health and community services. We looked at the plans for 8 out of 31 HSCPs across Scotland to see what the common themes were across their priorities.

We found that key themes Partnerships are focusing on right now are:

• Continuing to shift focus on early intervention and prevention by strengthening community supports and services. This theme brings together a range of plans around supporting self management, tackling health inequalities, promoting good mental and physical health, family support and reducing harms from drug and alcohol use.
• Increasing meaningful involvement of people with lived experience of accessing services by developing and implementing robust engagement and participation plans. Several Partnerships are working toward being able to co-produce services and supports with people with lived experience, unpaid carers, families and other members of their communities.
• Improving awareness of and access to support for unpaid carers, and working with unpaid carers and local organisations to develop and tailor support services.
• Building, improving and transforming relationships with all partners, especially third sector and voluntary organisations in their areas.
• Developing and embedding human rights approaches to providing care, support and treatment.
• Supporting the wellbeing of the health and social care workforce.
• Transforming leadership and organisational cultures to enable more integrated ways of working.

The report also considers what was overlooked across the plans we reviewed. For example, most of the HSCPs we looked at aspire to tackle health inequalities, but did not discuss how they intend to address the specific health needs of different groups of people, specifically women’s health, BAME communities and Gypsy/Roma Traveller communities. The development of the Community Link Worker service – which has been vital to tackling health inequalities in Scotland – was also given little attention. Finally, plans were unclear about how Partnerships will fully implement Self-directed Support and ensure that all options are available to anyone who needs it.

The report concludes by making several recommendations for HSCPs relating to the need to clarify some of their delivery plans and objectives based on the gaps we highlight. 

The report is linked at the bottom of the page. If you have any questions about this research then you can get in touch with Charlotte O’Brien, Policy Officer (Integration, Lived Experience and Engagement), charlotte.o’brien@alliance-scotland.org.uk. And you can learn more about our integration team here.

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