 How older people move between health and social care in England
Today we have published Beyond barriers, bringing together key findings and recommendations for change, following completion of 20 local authority area reviews exploring how older people move between health and adult social care services in England.
Many older people have complex and long-term care needs that need more than one professional and more than one service. Their experience depends on how well services work together with and for them, their families and carers.
Beyond barriers highlights some examples of health and care organisations working well together, and of individuals working across organisations to provide high quality care. But the reviews also found too much ineffective coordination of health and care services, leading to fragmented care.
The report sets out a number of recommendations designed to encourage improvement in the way organisations and professionals work to support older people to stay well, including:
- The development of an agreed joint plan created by local leaders for how older people are to be supported in their own homes, helped in an emergency and then enabled to return home.
- Long term funding reform, underpinned by a move from short-term to long-term investment in services, and from an activity-based funding model towards population-based budgets.
- A single joint framework for measuring the performance of how organisations collectively deliver improved outcomes for older people. This would operate alongside oversight of individual provider organisations and reflect the contributions of all health and care organisations.
- The development of joint workforce plans, with more flexible and collaborative approaches to staff skills and career paths. National health and social care leaders should make it easier for individuals to move between health and care settings, enabling people to work and gain skills in a variety of different settings so that services can remain responsive to local population needs.
- New legislation to allow CQC to regulate systems and hold them to account for how people and organisations work together to support people to stay well and to improve the quality of care people experience across all the services they use.
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