NHS will take responsibility for delivery of children’s and adult social care
The NHS is to run social care services in Trafford from this month, the council has announced.
Pennine Care NHS Foundation will take lead responsibility for children’s services in the borough while retaining their existing responsibilities for delivering adult services. Both organisations will continue to be responsible for their individual statutory obligations.
“This approach will not only enable continued improvement and development of local services, but ensure Trafford has efficient, effective, value for money health and social care services in future,” said a statement from the council.
The partnership agreement will see health and social care staff working together in integrated teams, based in four Trafford localities: north, south, central and west. With support from other local organisations, the integration will allow a range of care providers, such as primary care, schools, pharmacists, and nursing and residential homes, to work much more closely to benefit Trafford residents.
NHS Trafford Clinical Commissioning Group are currently implementing new care pathways, shared case management, IT systems and processes which will be in place and developed to work with the Trafford Care Co-ordination Centre.
There will be further developments around safeguarding, including the introduction of an ‘All Age Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub’ (MASH) and a single point of access for agencies and professionals to raise safeguarding concerns. There will be better co-ordination of care for people and families with complex needs, a strong focus on reducing utilisation of hospital care, as well as greater promotion of self-help, with support available to help Trafford residents to manage their own health and social care needs.
Trafford Council Chief Executive, Theresa Grant, said: "The Council and its partners are committed to improving the health and wellbeing of local people, ensuring they are safe and within strong family units and receive excellent quality services. In Trafford we are rightly proud of the formal partnership working which continues across children’s and adults services. With significant changes underway both locally and through the wider health devolution, it is right we develop a sustainable health and social care model.
“Our strong approach to partnership working has achieved excellence in our joint children and young people's services which is recognised nationally. This latest radical step to provide an all age model of service delivery will enable us to provide tailored, person and family-centred focussed services. In turn these will help local people of all ages stay safe and independent, receiving support from highly-skilled, effective professionals at a time and in a way it is needed,” she added.
A Partnership Agreement has been in place between the two organisations since November 2013 and the new arrangements will run until March 2018.
The council said that a significant transformation programme is underway to support the delivery of the new service by the end of 2016.
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