Dear colleagues,

In this week’s update:
 
  • Better Care Support Team at NCAS Conference
  • Call for examples of best practice: workforce
  • Payment models and risk sharing workshops
  • Peer Review Programme
  • Better Care Exchange
  • #OurDay
  • Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015
  • Meet the team
Better Care Support Team at NCAS Conference

This year’s National Children and Adult Services Conference is being held in Bournemouth on 14-16 October. Organised by the Local Government Association (LGA), Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), and Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), NCASC is an important event for all those involved in the delivery of services to children and adults.

The Better Care Support Team will be attending the conference. Although we’re not running any specific sessions this year, we can be found around the Department of Health and Local Government Association stands. 

We’ll also be holding a drop in session for anyone who has questions about the Better Care Fund – come and find us in the Department of Health lounge area from 13:00-14:00 on Thursday 15 October.

 

Call for examples of best practice: supporting a workforce to deliver integrated care
Here in the Better Care Support Team, we’re keen to capture and share examples of the good practice that’s going on at a local level around England. We’ll be using this regular note to call for examples of best practice on a number of themes – today we’re keen to hear about an integrated workforce.

We are looking for any information you’d like to share with other local areas about your integrated workforce plans and strategies. Templates and guidance can also be useful, even if it isn’t a finalised draft, as it may be valuable for other areas trying to develop similar roles, job descriptions or competency frameworks.

We are specifically keen to find out more about:
  • What is working around recruitment, retention and redeployment;
  • Careers pathways in integrated teams, or new roles;
  • Core competencies for new hybrid roles e.g. public health career framework
  • Practical examples of cultural and behavioural change
You can share examples with us directly to england.bettercaresupport@nhs.net, or on the Best Practice board on the Better Care Exchange - Best Practices. These examples will be used to build up a log of good practice from around the country on different themes, that we can share to help others tackling similar issues. So don’t be shy – let us know what you’re doing to support your local workforce to deliver integrated care.
 

Payment models and risk sharing workshops
The Better Care Support Team is working with Monitor and the NHS New Models of Care Team to address the challenges and barriers to integrated care around payment models and risk sharing. We’ll be running a series of workshops focussing on:

  • Designing payment models
  • Technical assistance
  • Modelling tools which simulate different types of risk sharing.
  • There will be a Peer to Peer aspect – whereby Pioneer and Vanguard sites who are advanced in this area will be sharing their learning, experience and knowledge.
To find out more about this support offer, including details of any workshops being run in your area, please contact:

adiba.enwonwu@nhs.net

 

BCF Peer Review Programme
Areas which have expressed an interest in participating in the Peer Review Programme have been contacted with an outline of the key elements of the programme, so that they can understand the commitment required.

We are currently finalising the timetable for the programme of work, but there is still time for interested parties to sign up – email adiba.enwonwu@nhs.net for more information.
 

Better Care Exchange update
We’ve got a new face in the team here – Yasmine Hafiz will now be leading on the Better Care Exchange. You can find out more about her in the ‘Meet the Team’ section below. For those of you who aren’t aware of, the Better Care Exchange brings together all key documents relating to integrated care and makes them easily accessible. It also provides a platform for collaboration and shared learning by putting you in touch with colleagues working on similar issues across the country.

Yasmine is in the process of making some key changes to the Exchange to reflect feedback we’ve had on its usability. Log on at http://bettercare.tibbr.com to check out what’s been posted recently – including the snapshot on Bath and NE Somerset that we published a few weeks ago. Just remember to click on the ‘Company Stream’ tab on the left hand side to see all of the posts that have been made.
 

#OurDay Wednesday 18 November
This year #OurDay, the day when the Local Government Association ask people working in local government to tweet about what they’re doing to serve their community, is taking place on 18 November. Last year’s #OurDay saw over 3,000 people participating on Twitter, sending more than 16,000 tweets.

This year, the LGA have produced a toolkit for councils and are working with stakeholders to make sure as many areas of local government as possible are represented. If you tweet, either from a personal account or a work account, please do get involved and encourage your contacts in #localgov to get involved too.
 

It would be great to see some tweets from local BCF projects and teams – so please get involved.

 

Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015
The Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015 comes into force today – 1 October 2015. The Act reinforces existing good practice and obligations on health and social care professionals and provides statutory support for the seventh Caldicott principle that – “the duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient”. It includes two new duties:

·         A requirement for health and adult social care organisations to use a consistent identifier (the NHS Number) for sharing data for direct care of a patient.

·         A legal duty requiring health and adult social care bodies to share information with each other for the direct care of a patient.

The Information Governance Alliance (IGA) is offering new guidance and a short series of webinars to support the implementation of the new Act. You can find out more, including the dates and topics of the webinars from the ICA news website - http://systems.hscic.gov.uk/infogov/iga/news
 

Meet the Team

 

This week, we meet Yasmine Hafiz, our new Better Care Exchange curator.

 

Yasmine Hafiz – Better Care Exchange


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Yasmine is just completing her first month with the Better Care Support Team. She is currently working on improving the Better Care Exchange (have you logged in recently?) and contributing to learning and insight projects. This is her first posting on the Civil Service Fast Stream, and she is delighted to be working to help integrate health and social care.

Yasmine recently completed an MSc. at the London School of Economics in Comparative Politics. Prior to that, she spent a year and a half in New York City working as Associate Religion Editor for the Huffington Post. She graduated from Yale University, where she studied Political Science and hosted a weekly radio show.

Yasmine has spent time living in Kuwait, Arizona, Connecticut, Saudi Arabia, Istanbul, and Singapore, but is happiest in London. She has strong feelings about the NYC subway vs. the tube (apparently the tube is much better!). Outside work, she enjoys exploring parks, wandering around art museums, going to concerts, and attempting to cook new dishes.
Strange fact – Yasmine once came 3rd in a national rifle competition in Kuwait. We’re all a bit more nervous around her now that we know this…

Anthony Kealy

Anthony Kealy

Better Care Support Team Programme Director