What does health transformation mean? How does it affect the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector in Camden?
These are questions raised recently in Camden’s State of the Sector Report and VAC’s own surveys. So here goes…….the first thing to note (and I apologise in advance) health transformation involves lots of jargon, initialisations and acronyms!! I will aim to define or write these in full at least once……
You are probably aware that there are changes taking place in health and care services. Importantly the shifting relationships that will (we hope) make space for community organisations and residents to collaborate in delivering the health and care communities need. Terms like ‘health transformation’ and ‘systemic change’ are often used to describe this massively ambitious process. Change is being driven by new health and care ‘systems’ and new types of collaboration. In Camden we are part of the North Central London Integrated Care System (NCL ICS). This is governed by an integrated care board (ICB).
The voluntary sector communicates with the ICB via a steering group that uses local sector insights and evidence to promote and embed VCSE collaboration – The NCL VCSE Alliance steering group has recently produced the first issue of a newsletter which you can see here.
The newsletter will be circulated every 2 months in VAC’s newsletter – with spoilers from me on what to look out for should it start to get exciting….. The first issue summarises and explains the NCL system and strategy stuff if you want the in-depth background – so happily I don’t need to cover all that here….
So what has VAC been up to? A couple of years ago VAC held forums and meetings to explore how the Camden voluntary sector wanted to work with the new health system. Since then all the sector ‘asks’ have been incorporated into the relevant NCL strategies and action plans (yes, it takes a while!).
You can find the strategies for working with communities and the VCSE sector here:
Actions on those strategies to develop a way for VCSEs to participate (largely through collaborating and resourcing) are slowly being tested and learned from. It’s not straightforward, in fact it appears pretty haphazard a lot of the time, but everyone is learning, and trying to manage the scale and complexity of the task within limited resources. Even making sure core principles for working with VCSEs are understood across a huge and complex system is frustratingly slow!
Anyway, enough on the challenge of the process …… here’s a snapshot of some VCSE-relevant and emerging themes:
Changing delivery of health and care:
Population Health: supporting the health of the whole population rather than putting all the emphasis on treating illness. This means more attention to preventing, improving and managing poor health, especially in relation to the prevalence of long-term health conditions in a population that is living for longer
Personalised Care: treating the whole person including understanding wider determinants of health like welfare, social and environmental challenges, and supporting self-care
Integrated working: NHS, council, VCSEs, residents – ideally all collaborating to achieve the above so that residents are confident their needs are understood and don’t have to keep repeating themselves
Health and care neighbourhoods: this is where it all happens. There are 5 in Camden. These locations make it easier for Camden’s health and care teams to work together. Neighbourhoods are about having services and support close to where people live. VCSEs shouldn’t get too tied up in the geographies – but look out for ways to get involved as networking opportunities emerge on your doorstep or where your beneficiaries are
Some of the things VCSEs can bring to the system:
Local knowledge and insights….Championing and health promotion…..Addressing health inequalities (including introducing different approaches)…….Training, co-training, orientation for system staff……..Insights and case finding for undiagnosed conditions or needs…….Access to communities that find health services difficult to use…….Wrap around ‘wider determinants’ support in the community / neighbourhood……Discharge from clinical services into safe, supportive communities / neighbourhoods……Participation in research and service design………Sustainable healthy ‘lifestyle’ support for residents in their communities
Components and aspirations of the integrated care system like the examples above suggest huge potential for VCSEs to collaborate with health providers. How that happens is the challenge now being addressed! Importantly there is an NCL VCSE Investment Project underway that includes the NCL Integrated Care Board, councils and the NCL VCSE Alliance steering group.
The project will learn from existing commissioning and resourcing of the VCSE sector e.g. council investment, and develop an approach for the NCL system. Working groups will look at ways of working and communications, improving commissioning, reviewing commissioning approaches, and increasing investment opportunities.
As all this takes shape VAC will keep Camden VCSEs updated in our newsletter and gather comment and contribution on any developments. In the meantime, anyone from our local voluntary sector who would like to discuss or find out a bit more about the work of the NCL VCSE Alliance please do email me or contact me to arrange a chat!
Donna Turnbull, VAC Health Transformation and Partnerships Manager, dturnbull@vac.org.uk.
