Building a strategy for health and care in BSW
At the end of last year BSW’s Integrated Care Partnership met in public and discussed, among other things, the development of an Integrated Care Strategy. But what is the Strategy and why is it important?
What is the BSW Integrated Care Strategy?
The BSW Integrated Care Strategy is an important document which sets out what improvements BSW Together Integrated Care System partners will deliver for local people including tackling health inequalities and delivering better, more personalised services.
It draws on elements from individual strategies that already exist and, while the ICS does not intend to replace those strategies, it will provide a summary of how these different elements will work together.
Who is developing it?
The BSW Integrated Care Strategy is being developed by the BSWW Integrated Care Partnership. However, it will be based on input from partners across the BSW Integrated Care System and will draw, for instance, on Health and Wellbeing Strategies from local councils.
A productive engagement event was held in December to develop the themes of the strategy. This was attended by more than sixty colleagues from partner organisations across BSW including Healthwatch, the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise Sector, Local Authorities and NHS organisations. You can find out more about how our ICS and ICP are structured by watching this video: BSW Integrated Care System
Following the engagement event, a draft Integrated Care Strategy is being developed and will be shared with partner organisations for review in early 2023.
BSW ICB will develop an Integrated Care Implementation Plan over the summer to set out how the strategy will be put in place.
What is in the strategy?
The strategy is under development at the moment but there is a lot of consistency in the themes emerging from other strategies across the area, including tackling inequalities, prevention and wellbeing, development of communities, addressing environmental issues and looking at the wider factors that contribute to health and wellbeing such as housing, education, social mobility, income and employment.
It will focus on the health and wellbeing of local people, and look at what starting well, living well, aging well and dying well would mean for local people.
The BSW strategy will also cover some specific areas including a focus on prevention, delivering improvements in elective care, workforce development and system wide service changes such as the development of community services and virtual wards.
What happens next?
The Integrated Care Strategy is being developed on behalf of the Integrated Care
Partnership and will be presented for formal adoption in Spring 2023. The document will continue to remain ‘live’ and engagement with partners will continue on the strategy after it has been published.
The Implementation Plan, which is also known as the Joint Forward Plan (JFP), is due to be published by 30th June 2023, with a draft version being produced by 31st March.
Get involved:
The draft strategy is still a work in progress and further updates will be generated in due course. If you would like to provide feedback or have a conversation about the strategy, please do so by emailing: bswicb.bswstrategy@nhs.net