Working with two health and social care partnerships
IRISS worked with two Health and Social Care Partnerships interested in improving person-centred care for people with long-term conditions. These were:
- North West Glasgow, where we worked with people who had experience and knowledge of dementia
- North Lanarkshire, where we worked with people who had experience and knowledge of heart failure and were under 65
Health and social care partnerships
The opportunity to participate in Keeping it Personal (KiP) was promoted across 14 Health Boards by the People Powered Health and Well-being (PPHW) Director, who met with Health Board Managers and then Executive Leads. In addition, we promoted this opportunity via the IRISS website, newsletter, and the Scottish Health Council’s newsletter. We received 14 expressions of interest and chose who to work with depending upon potential partners’:
- Readiness and willingness to work collaboratively and inclusively
- Ability to support the recruitment of other participants
- Willingness to commit to the project aims
- Commitment to safeguarding senior managers’ and relevant practitioners’ time to engage with the project
- Willingness to share the learning from the project and project outputs
Three applications were shortlisted and two sites were chosen – North Lanarkshire and North West Glasgow.
North West Glasgow
In Glasgow there are examples of the integration of health and social care services, but also areas where integration will be required more fully as partnerships develop. Four services areas were initially identified by our partner that could provide a focus for a KiP project.
The Person Centred Health & Care Programme Manager met with the Dementia Support and Development Lead after this application was successful and it was agreed to focus the project on a post-diagnostic support service for people who have dementia. This service was chosen because it was a new service being developed nationally and across the Health Board. Health and third sector practitioners were starting to work together, and the project leads wanted to support person-centred practice from the outset.
Our North West Glasgow team saw the project as providing an opportunity to explore the potential of cross sector-working. In particular, to help design and develop new models of care delivery while establishing and building relationships with other agencies. Additionally, the project was seen as an opportunity to learn how staff can work more effectively, feel more connected with each other and with those they support, and become more person-centred in their approach.
North Lanarkshire
North Lanarkshire already has successful integrated working relationships based on a locality structure, however the local authority wanted to look at how this relationship could develop further. There was particular interest in developing the design of services using a co-productive approach, involving people in the local authority and NHS staff. This represented a change from the existing approach of using traditional multi-disciplinary local planning groups.
North Lanarkshire chose to focus on people under the age of 65 who have lived experience of heart failure. Heart failure affects 4- 5% of people in Lanarkshire, with an expectation that this will increase significantly over the next 20 years. Therefore the focus of this work was to take a preventative approach.