How independent is the new National Academy for Social Prescribing?
At its best Social Prescribing is about trying to take a holistic strength based approach to health and wellbeing. It recognises that some of the solutions to improving health and wellbeing cannot be found in clinical interventions but instead already exist in communities, and by connecting people to these it is possible for people to build on their own strengths thereby improving their confidence and wellbeing.
NHS England has an ambitious programme of rolling out Social Prescribing Community Link Workers to all Primary Care Networks in England. Complementing this the Department for Health and Social Care has just established a National Academy for Social Prescribing (NAfSP) to foster the development of Social Prescribing in England.
The Strategic Challenge for Social Prescribing
Shifting a predominantly clinical NHS model to coproduce solutions with local communities is a significant cultural change. Some of the challenges include:
- If social prescribing is to have a real impact on General Practice there will need to be a radical change to the primary care delivery model. Not all GPs are convinced of the model and it barely reaches the acute sector.
- Local Government is not systematically involved in this NHSE programme (there are local examples where this has happened) developing holistic models will require multi-disciplinary engagement in neighbourhoods.
- The relationship between social prescribing and specialist services like community development, youth work, welfare rights, advocacy, health trainers and local area coordination, needs thrashing out – otherwise people will just be referred from one service to the next – or even worse specialist services (often supporting the most needy) will continue to struggle with lack of funding because some will believe that social prescribing renders all other services unnecessary.
- The voluntary and community sector has borne the brunt of the cuts under the Coalition and Conservative governments – it is already struggling to respond to demand – social prescribing risks overwhelming already hard pressed local communities.
- Inequalities – to date NHS England has seen social prescribing as something that can be rolled out equally across all practices – little thought has been given to whether this is a model that should place a greater emphasis on addressing structural inequalities – both with regard to resource allocation and service design.
These challenges mean that the NAfSP will need to:
- Gather and Share good practice
- Influence NHS services and General Practice
- Work as a critical friend with NHS England in the further development of personalisation
- If necessary challenge Government with particular regard to the impact of its policies and funding on communities and local government
- Ensure that it has strong links and some accountability to communities
Problems
Given the above challenges and actions needed to address these it is concerning that the NAfSP appears to be very reliant on the patronage of Matt Hancock the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who according to this FOI request has authorised:
- the establishment of NAfSP as a private company limited by guarantee – there has been no tender or approach to any existing organisation
- a direct initial donation of £5m of DHSC funds with the promise of more to come.
- the appointment of a board of directors for the company – with no external recruitment of whom at least 2 are active in the Conservative Party.
It is interesting that NHS England (who have a who have a Director on the Board and appear to have provided over £.6m) accept no responsibility for the funding of or appointments to this new organisation – despite Social Prescribing being a clear part of the NHS England action plan on personalisation.
Matt Hancock has close links with the Institute of Economic Affairs a free market think tank who have a clear position on charities that are funded solely by Governments, they call them “Sock Puppets”. In other words not really independent – just mouthing the interests of Government.
Given the NAfSP fits all the IEA ‘sock puppet’ criteria – a company with all directors appointed directly by the minister with 100% funding from government it is hard to see how it is well placed to drive forward an effective change agenda that will need to achieve two things. First, make sure that attention is paid to the needs of hard pressed communities and second bring effective independent challenge to the health system, key stakeholders and of course government to help local health systems become more more person and community centred.
Between now and the new financial year the new charity will be established – it will be important to be sighted on who is on the board, will key players be involved like:
- the local voluntary sector for example Locality?
- local government – the New Local Government Network?
- Universities with a track record such as the University of Westminster or Sheffield Hallam?
What do you think?
We need local strategies to tackle financial insecurity and debt
If we can’t tell the story about the scale and impact of financial insecurity and debt at a local level we won’t have the actions in place to tackle it.
Without a clear story even well intentioned local authorities and health organisations can end up taking a piece meal approach to trying to respond to need.
So, one local authority might put significant investment in welfare rights provision, another in food banks. A Clinical Commissioning Group in one place will fund welfare rights advice for people with mental health problems while another may not.
Despite government imposed austerity there is still a point to taking a more coherent approach – there are things we can do to help people access the welfare benefits they are entitled to from DWP and as importantly there is a continued to need to ensure that people are supported in resolving personal indebtedness.
I am not arguing that resolving financial insecurity and poverty is something that is solely within the gift of local players. However, there are actions that can be taken and by taking a coherent approach this exposes areas where Government Policy needs to change.
Lacking a clear narrative – lets call it a Local Financial Insecurity Strategy means that:
- links with other issues are not made – for example local housing, health inequality and adult social care pressures.
- money is wasted on public health prevention strategies by failing to recognise the impact of financial insecurity and debt
- it is harder to develop inclusive strategies to support people who find it hard to access the job market such as those with mental health problems. So, these initiatives may not include wrap around provision to ameliorate job insecurity and low wages.
- investment in supportive services at a local level are piecemeal, adhoc and naive. For example, it is easy to believe that the solution for the need for welfare advice is to invest in social prescribing without recognising that entry level benefits such as Employment Support Allowance or Personal Independence Payments often require expert, intensive and ongoing support and advocacy to help claimants fight their way through the system.
Developing a more coherent story
I am currently heading up a small piece of work which is funded by the Health Foundation which aims to develop a framework that will enable places to develop a more strategic approach to addressing financial insecurity and debt.
The programme is being coordinated by the Royal Society of Public Health in partnership with the Faculty of Public Health.
We will be working in partnership with up to three local authorities in England. We also have ONS, Public Health England, Step Change, Citizens Advice (national) and the Institute for Health Equity involved.
Some principles
First, with one exception there is no data set which provides granular and real time data on levels of financial insecurity and debt in populations. The one exception is probably Experian – currently advertised on the television by Marcus Brigstock. I wrote about Experian and their data – a couple of years ago here.
It is unlikely that we will be able to develop an approach that has this level of granularity and focus because local authorities have to pay Experian for this data.
Nonetheless there is a reasonable evidence base that might allow us to produce a framework that by using synthetic estimates might give a best possible view on the financial insecurity and debt pressures within specific populations.
Second, we tend to focus on geography – and this may be valid particularly where financially insecure populations are concentrated in particular areas of local authority.
However, it might be as good to focus on particular communities of interest who are experiencing financial stress – I wrote about people who have experienced severe trauma in a recent blog here. But this also applies to people with mental health problems, cancer, head injury etc. This approach has the potential added advantage of developing shared ownership with other systems such as the NHS.
Third, I think don’t think that we need something really exact – frankly some credible data, clarity about about population size and some true stories will be better than what we have now and will help local decision makers develop a clearer approach – this is all possible! See the blog I wrote on food banks and welfare rights.
What do you think?
Declaration of interest – I am chair of Citizens Advice Sheffield
I was in an Integrated Care System meeting recently and was (sadly) not surprised to be told by an Acute Hospital Chief Executive that they did not have a role to play in the prevention agenda – this rested with agencies outside hospital such as primary care, public health, local government etc.
In response I told the story of a small piece of work Citizens Advice Sheffield has been doing with the Sheffield Teaching Hospital Trust. We have been providing a targeted ward based welfare benefits advice service for the last 6 months which is specifically aimed at people who are using the major trauma unit.
These are people who are recovering from traumatic injury that may have arisen from a fall, a serious assault or road traffic accident.
As you can imagine in addition to the physical impact of trauma people have to deal with the effect this has on other parts of their lives such as their ability to work and sustain employment.
Further, they have to work their way through the benefit system – making the case for benefits they are entitled to that can include Personal Independence Payments, Carers and Attendance Allowance.
All the time they are coming to terms with their new status they run the risk of personal indebtedness as they try to stabilise their finances. For example according to MacMillan people who are diagnosed with Cancer on face an average drop of £570 in monthly income for similar reasons.
It should be clear that trying to address these issues at such a difficult time can have a negative effect on wellbeing and personal resilience which in turn can effect peoples ability to engage with and respond to treatment.
As can be seen in the table below the bulk of this pilots work focussed on benefits and tax credits, with the next largest area being employment.
When we look at the benefit issues some of the major areas are:
- Personal Independence Payments
- Help with an initial claim – I would imagine that for many people this may be their first encounter with the benefit system
- Employment Support Allowance
- Council Tax Reduction
Cost
The full cost of this service over a year is £7,000. At the moment the service is funded as a pilot by the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Charity, but the ambition is that this will eventually receive mainstream funding.
Going Forward
The lessons provided by this service are clear. It builds on work that Citizens Advice Sheffield already does with regard to Mental Health and Cancer (of course Macmillan have pioneered welfare rights and cancer for years) where welfare rights services are aligned with and integrated into communityheath trust and acute hospital assessment and care pathways. There are plenty of other areas where there could be similar benefits – such as Stroke with degenerative illnesses like Parkinsons and Multiple Sclerosis.
The key issue is recognising that some illnesses and conditions cause a significant impact on people’s ability to control their own wellbeing and access to welfare rights and financial support has to be targeted and built into the health pathway.
Acute Hospitals
So, going back to the start of this blog – acute hospitals do have a significant role to play in prevention – and part of this is about changing the way they provide services IN hospital. As Dr Kevin Smith (Head of Healthcare at Public Health England) said at the time – we should not be led by ‘bean counting’ performance targets – the issue is how we ensure that when people are in our care we address the health and wellbeing needs of the whole person – this means addressing the social determinants of health is the responsibility of all parts of the NHS.
What do you think?
Declaration of interest – I am the chair of Citizens Advice Sheffield
NHS organisations usually have something like a Quality Assurance Committee which is responsible for gathering and analysing information on service quality. They do this primarily by gathering a range of data, most of which they are required to use and has been created at a national level.
However, we don’t usually consider why these measures exist in the first place – and whether they are fit for purpose.
Lets take a step back…..
The NHS is a national service which is managed through the Government’s delivery arm – NHS England.
Many of the experience measures that local NHS organisations are required to use such as National Surveys, CQC, Friends and Family Test (I talked about these in an earlier blog here) are there primarily to give assurance to central government that organisations are delivering services that are of a good standard – they allow the government to compare one NHS trust against another.
They therefore tend to:
- be broad brush – focussing on organisations or services rather than on specific interactions at in specific sites – eg wards.
- place an emphasis on reaching a sample of patients which is usually at an organisation not a service level.
- not distinguish between the views of patients and those of carers
- be insufficiently targeted so miss out on Carers and people who struggle to have their voices heard such as those on locked wards or with a profound disability
- not be in real time
- provide limited opportunities for qualitative feedback
- offer few opportunities for coproduction and relational dialogue
Nonetheless because their utilisation is performance managed by Government local NHS organisations devote a significant amount of intellectual and organisational energy to establish and maintain systems that analyse them.
I think this means that less attention is paid to questioning whether this information is useful for service improvement and what would work better.
A better way?
Local Health and Care Systems need systems that respond more sensitively to particular services and relationships and empower frontline workers to take action to improve.
Patient experience measures need to reflect the circumstances that people find themselves in and the relationship they have with health services, for example experience measures will vary according to whether:
- its a short term relationship – going in for a fairly straightforward and one off surgical intervention
- the depth of relationship – a relative caring for someone with Alzheimers
- its a long term relationship – someone with a long term condition such as an ongoing mental health problem or someone with a learning disability
- someone is a frequent User – someone with type 1 diabetes or kidney disease
There are other considerations too – at a local level NHS and Care organisations need experience measures that:
- provide a framework that helps frontline staff feel empowered to have a dialogue with people who use their services
- helps front line staff feel that issues that are raised with them can help them make the case for improvement.
- builds a shared agenda between staff and patients
We need a much greater emphasis on measures that empower front line services to improve. There are examples – I do think that Care Opinion provides a useful model – it is:
- Real time
- service focussed – providing a platform for front line staff and managers to engage
- patient focussed – allowing the public to tell their story in a wholistic way
- takes dialogue out of committees and to the front line
- provides a strategic model that allows organisations to keep tabs on quality as a whole and at the same time reflects the different relationships and concerns of different services
What do you think?
This blog is based on a talk a gave to a Care Opinion away day earlier this year
Centralising the NHS – the local Democratic Deficit at the heart of the NHS Long Term Plan
The more I read the NHS Long Term plan the more confused I become. The source of my confusion is the following tiny paragraph lurking in Chapter 1 of the NHS Long Term Plan that sets out the deadline for establishment of the sub regional Integrated Care Systems and by implication the end of local (local authority level or ‘place based’) Clinical Commissioning Groups.
This paragraph states that by April 2021 (just over 2 years away) Integrated Care Systems – will cover the country and that each Integrated Care System will typically involve one Clinical Commissioning Group which will be leaner and more strategic organisations that support providers to partner with local government and other community organisations.
If my understanding is correct this will lead in most cases to the number of organisations that are responsible and accountable for making local health systems work dropping considerably – which means that accountability for system governance becomes more distant from local authorities and from local people.
In the graph below I compare the present involvement in sub regional Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships of local authorities and CCGs with what the world might look like once all Integrated Care Systems have been created – with one CCG for each ICS. My working out is all here – I have counted this manually so there will be mistakes!
As the graph shows currently the number of CCGs by NHSE region are roughly comparable with the number of local authorities – so, generally speaking the NHS and local authorities have similar governance geographies. This changes radically in the new world.
In simple terms I think the current and future governance of the local health system is a bit like this:
NHS England might say that my representation is not fair, after all they promise:
- Place Based Plans that feed into ICS strategies – I say these are plans not accountable organisations rooted in places
- Primary Care Networks – I say these are vehicles for the delivery of local services – which might include some coproduction
- A wide range of mechanisms to facilitate joint provision at a local level such as local ‘alliance’ contracts, lead providers, Integrated Care Providers etc – again, I say all of these are about the integrated provision of batches of services and are not concerned with local governance and accountability.
- Local Authority Over View and Scrutiny continues – this is true but they now also have to keep an eye on the ICS with no additional resource.
- Local NHS Trusts continue to exist – which is true – but they are only responsible for their services.
In summary (as I flagged up in an earlier blog) I think the current plan will see a weakening of local accountability for the way in which local health systems work. Instead there will be more of a focus on developing and delivering integrated local services with an aspiration that that these will be tailored to local need.
To some degree this dissonance is highlighted by the New Local Government Network in their challenging blog about the long term plan.
What next?
Local Authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups have a small window to work together to create local structures that at the very least enshrine some form of local accountability at a place level for the local health system as a whole. The challenge is to do this in a way that rises above the NHS England focus on managing services and instead creates mechanisms that recognise that decisions about health and wellbeing are a compromise between clinical evidence, local ambition and social determinants.
If anyone reading this thinks I have got the direction of travel wrong please let me know.
Declaration of interest – I am a lay member of Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group
What do you think?
The NHS Long Term Plan and Social Prescribing
While welcomed in some quarters the NHS Long Term Plan has come in for a fair amount of criticism for its lack of strategic heft and poor focus on the relationship that the NHS must have with external partners such as local government and the voluntary and community sector.
One of the areas where it does recognise the importance of making connections between communities, their assets and the voluntary sector is with regard to Social Prescribing.
Social Prescribing has developed a fair amount of traction in the NHS. Indeed, the term itself speaks to front line health professionals such GPs, it uses their language and it has gathered around it some significant champions such as Dr Michael Dixon who was also the founding Chair of the NHS Alliance.
This is what the NHS Long Term Plan says:
I think this means that by 2023/4 900,000 people a year will be offered Social Prescribing by the NHS. Note the commitment to 1,000 social prescribing link workers. I have allocated them by population size of CCG so for example Sheffield get 10 and Corby 1 (my full CCG list is here) of course doing it this way takes no account of inequality. The statement about NHS Social Prescribing Link workers has generated anxiety in the voluntary sector who are the main providers currently – with concern that these will be NHS employees.
At the moment there are about 59.7 million patients registered with GPs who make over 240 million appointments a year. compared to the 900,000 a year promised for Social Prescribing. This means that in 5 years time social prescribing activity will be equivalent to .38% of appointments at GPs. Here is an illustration of the scale of this.
If you are an average patient and see your GP four times a year the odds of you being offered a Social Prescribing appointment are approximately once in every 60 years!
Of course it is fairer to say that not everyone who sees a GP will need or want referral to social prescribing. It is probably more realistic to focus on people with multi morbidity. A recent study by the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge showed that over half of GP consultations are now with patients with multi-morbidity – this equates to 120m appointments a year.
The pie chart below shows how the NHS England social prescribing commitment would impact on this challenge. It is clear that the current NHSE commitment still gets nowhere near – indeed it could be said that the NHSE response is so diluted and small that it will be almost homeopathic in terms of its system level effect!
Real scale of the challenge
I mentioned in an earlier blog on Welfare Rights and Health that a joint paper produced by Citizens Advice and the Royal College of General Practice estimated that approximately 20% of GP time was spent with patients who presented with non clinical issues that would be better addressed elsewhere.
I think that this proportion is likely to be much greater with when General Practice is providing a service to disadvantaged communities who are likely to have to higher levels of multi-morbidity and a greater level of non clinical issues.
Finally there is a subsidiary point even a small target of just under a million people receiving social prescribing services will have a knock on effect to voluntary sector services. Some existing social prescribing services such as Rotherham have a degree of funding that recognises this. The NHSE 10 year plan does not seem to recognise this.
What this means
The current ambition set out in the Long Term Plan leaves social prescribing as a bit of a sideshow for the next 5 years. There is a real risk that once the magical 900,000 a year target is met that the foot comes off the gas – with little having been achieved.
- Maybe this level of ambition matches need?
- Perhaps only 1% of people who see GPs require social prescribing?
- If it is only a minority interest then should more thought be given to ensure that this investment is reaching out to those who would benefit most rather than being generally available?
- Given the small scale of investment are there other interventions such as Local Area Coordination, Community Development and Health Trainers that might have a greater impact that should be considered by NHS England too?
What do you think?
NHS Friends and Family Test Feedback – a distorted view?
I try to be cautious about big numbers – warning bells ring particularly when the first thing that you read talks about the numbers of responses rather than what the problem is and how it is being solved.
So when I looked at the Friends and Family Test (FFT) web page on the NHS England site and saw that it says that since FFT was launched in 2013 it has produced 55 million pieces of feedback and this feedback is growing at the rate of 1.2m a month I thought it was worth trying to understand this a bit more.
The Friends and Family Test was introduced in 2013 and NHS organisations are mandated to use it to provide a means for the public to give feedback about their experience of using NHS services. The review of friends and family test stated that its aims were to be:
- A tool for local service improvement
- Provide information to empower patient choice
- Intra-trust performance monitoring
- Proved comparable data to hold trusts to account
Context
The NHS sees 1.4m patients every 24 hours. So in crude terms just under 3 in every 100 (1.2m/(1.4m*30))*100 of people give feedback through the Friends and Family Test.
However when you look at the responses in more detail we also see that the rate of feedback varies according to service area.
A caveat about the data
Its’ important to see the data as illustrative – I have cobbled this together from various websites – all sources are shown. However, the figures need to be seen as indicative and as prompts for discussion.
Number of times NHS services are used each year
I have missed out maternity and community because the FFT does not pick this up in the same way.
As you can see from the pie chart below the single biggest NHS service by use is General Practice – the table with all my figures in is here. The next largest service is outpatients followed by Dentistry and Accident and Emergency Attendance and so on.
Pie Chart One: NHS Services by number of times used a year
The next pie chart shows where Feedback from Friends and Family has come from by volume of responses. I have used the global figures – all the feedback – since Friends and Family was established (see total response rate column). The pie chart below presents a very different picture of the NHS to the service utilisation one above.
Pie Chart two: Proportion of FFT Feedback by NHS Service
So, some areas have a disproportionately high level of Friends and Family Feedback while others have a disproportionately low level of Feedback
Disproportionately Higher feedback compared to activity
- Specialist Mental Health 10 times greater
- Hospital Admissions 6 times greater
- A and E attendance 3 times greater
- Dentistry 1.3 times greater
About the same
- Outpatient Appointment
Disproportionately lower feedback compared to activity
- General practice – 3 times lower feedback compared to activity
This variation in response creates a distorted view of what the NHS is – over 70% of feedback relates to hospital provision – yet this is a small part of the NHS compared to General Practice, Community Services and Dentistry.
It does appear that the bulk of the feedback comes from services that are more transactional – in-patient, A & E, Dentist and Outpatient. Relational Services such as General Practice struggle to keep up here.
This imbalance in the data probably pulls regulators and performance managers towards hospital based services and away from community. I suspect that it is also the case that Hospitals are easier to performance manage; there are fewer of them and they are higher profile than GPs – performance management systems are able to focus on them more and are more motivated to do so given that the bulk of NHS spend is directed towards them.
Looking at the data above it is tempting to say that the focus should be on getting GPs to increase the FFT returns. I am not so sure – I wonder whether we should be asking:
- what difference FFT has made to those services who have high rates of feedback such as A&E and In-Patients
- whether there is a demonstrable difference in the quality of their work compared to GPs.
I will be coming back to the Friends and Family test in future blogs.
What do you think?
A bit more about the data – activity data comes from three main sources:
- NHS utilisation data comes from the NHS Confederation
- NHS Dental Statistics
- GP data comes from page 12 of this NHS England report
Noticing health inequalities and doing something about it
Making progress on tackling health inequalities is not just about getting the right evidence – it means challenging power, shifting culture and changing how we work. In order to do this we need a clear narrative – a story – that empowers champions, motivates the undecided and challenges the unconvinced.
We have struggled to do this – for example a decade ago it was a real success when we started to talk about differences in life expectancy between socio-economic groups by using examples that many people are now familiar with the such as the bus journey/bus stop analogy.
However, despite its success I think that life expectancy data was not sufficient to mobilise and sustain action at a local level. Some of the reasons for this might be that life expectancy:
- feels very far off – it does not feel sufficiently urgent to decision makers and service providers.
- as a measure does not reflect the profound impact that long term inequality has on health and wellbeing – it simply does not bring you into the room to feel the day to day life of living in circumstances of financial insecurity, poor housing etc.
- a short life can still feel to be a relatively small part of someones total life years and therefore may feel as though it is not a very big deal to some people.
Health Inequalities and Multi-Morbidity – a more powerful narrative
quote from Health Foundation Understanding the Health Care Needs of People with Multiple Health Conditions
In recent times thanks in significant part to the Institute of Health Equity and other players such as the Health Foundation we are seeing a shift to focus more on the impact of health inequality on Disability Free Life Years and multimorbidity.
This useful table from a RCGP article on the epidemiology of multimorbidity in primary care sets out the ten most prevalent morbidities and associated comorbidities
Table from Epidemiology of Primary Care (2018) by Anna Cassell, Duncan Edwards et al.
The graph below from the Institute of Health Equity shows how people who experience socio-economic inequality are likely to have a shorter period of disability free life expectancy than people who are wealthier and to already have poor health before they reach pension age.
Talking about the relationship between socio-economic inequality and Disability Free Life years (or the very similar multi-morbidity) is helpful because it:
- speaks directly to the NHS – in particular primary care (as is shown by this useful recent study in the British Journal of General Practice) because many of these conditions are amenable to clinical treatment.
- motivates local commissioners because there is a relationship between multi-morbidity and use of urgent care.
- brings a helpful focus on Mental Health particularly anxiety and depression
- is a greater motivator to action because it affects people earlier and for longer – so it feels more meaningful and relevant
- allows us to ask other questions such as why are people not accessing treatment or adhering to it – which drags the NHS into discussions about the social determinants of health
- opens up a debate about the role of the social welfare system and how the NHS connects with it because they both have a role in helping people live independent lives when they experience disability and illness.
Of course focussing on multi-morbidity does not in itself solve health inequalities – however it does challenge the NHS, make it clearer what it’s contribution can be and pushes health services to make stronger connections to agencies working to address the social determinants of health.
What do you think?
The end of Clinical Commissioning Groups?
Disappearance
It is beginning to look like Clinical Commissioning Groups are on the way out, the only question is how long this will take.
A key document (pages 29 to 37) is the 2017 Next Steps on the FYFV. It flags up the significant drive to create sub regional structures at a high speed using a mixture of financial incentives, creating voluntary pilot sites and through inviting local leaders to head up these initiatives.
The Next Steps report also flags up the creation of “accountable care systems” as a precursor to establishing “accountable care organisations” (see this BMJ 2018;360:k343 infographic) at a local level – bringing together providers and commissioners into one organisation.
Although there is no legislation for any of this; change has been made easier by existing flexibilities with regard to pooling budgets and austerity policies have meant that local organisations are increasingly compliant and willing to accept change if it offers the chance of additional funding.
In a very brief period of time we have been through – Sustainability and Transformation Plans which quickly led to the creation of partnership structures – initially called Accountable Care Systems through to their current iteration – Integrated Care Systems.
Some of the rationale for this feels sensible – it marks a move away from the purchaser/provider split created by the 1991 John Major Government and recognises that the artificial divide between the NHS and Local Government is unhelpful and inefficient.
Implementation has been rapid – NHS England already has a performance dashboard for first phase Integrated Care Systems. Its all a bit confusing. Even though there has been no legislative change to create these new structures we now have new subregional (Integrated Care System) and local (Accountable Care System) boards but all the existing Governing Bodies (hospital trusts, clinical commissioning groups, local authorities) are still legally responsible for the decisions. At a sub regional level this means that comparatively obscure local structures such as Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committees have to do their best to hold these new structures to account – with no additional resource.
Resource
So, at a time when the health and care system is creaking at the seams with real delivery problems we are double running two systems – one that is legally responsible and another shadow system (with most of the same players) where decisions are made……and then have to be ratified by the legal bodies.
This means that senior managers in the health and care system are spending time creating the new systems and running the current one. Of course NHSE has had to find new funding to employ them to do this.
For example in the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw ICS I reckon that around 15% of top management capacity has been pulled out of local systems to create the new sub regional structure. See this July 2018 press release from the ICS Chief Executive:
Understanding the finances is hard – but I think that the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw ICS has access to £7m transformation funding (see page 7 of this report). This probably means that NHS England has invested about £90m in the 14 different ICS sites agreed so far. I think that this money comes from an allocation that NHSE has for transformation (page 7 again). See table below.
Involvement and Accountability
Its not just the resource – as is often the case when new structures are created in the first phase the main players are the managers. The reason usually given is because of the need to get on with quickly creating the new system.
This leads to a bit of a paradox. Despite a genuine desire to break the mould the new structures end up looking very much like the old ones – and I think this means that behaviours, priorities and actions do so too.
While representation is important we need to go further if we are to have a dialogue that produces a different way of working locally. More investment has to go in to voluntary sector infrastructure so they can bring their expertise and challenge to the table and serious consideration needs to be given to strong elected and lay member involvement. I do think that they need to dig out some funding to strengthen the voluntary sector voice in this new world.
Despite the ambition the approach at a sub regional level already feels a bit like the old Strategic Health Authorities with an emphasis on structures dominated by NHS managers and performance management systems that look up to NHS England rather than down to local health systems.
Meanwhile, locally the direction of travel appears to be a greater focus on Accountable Care Organisations as this clear July 2018 report from the House of Commons Library explains.
What do you think?
Declaration – I am a lay member of Sheffield CCG and the above piece does NOT represent the views of Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group
Are we being too smug about the NHS at 70? Why aren’t we celebrating the abolition of the Poor Law?
All of the celebrations abut the NHS at 70 have left me a bit cold, with ceremonies across the land in Cathedrals and comments from our former secretary of state saying that the NHS:
“has come to symbolise one of the greatest advances of humanity: no matter who you are, rich or poor, young or old, in a civilised country you’ll always be able to access good healthcare”
Strangely, I have seen no celebrations of the 1948 National Assistance Act which like the NHS was created 70 years ago. Yet this important piece of legislation was a key component of the post war reforms and creation of the Welfare State following the second world war.
It worries me that we have no problem coming together across the country to celebrate the NHS but fail to acknowledge that it was only one part of a postwar settlement that aspired to create a fairer and more equal society through the creation of the welfare state. Aiming to tackle Beveridge’s 5 giant problems – Want, Disease, Squalor, Ignorance and Idleness.
Anyone in the NHS or wider public health who says that we need to focus more on ‘prevention’, get ‘upstream’ or recognise the ‘social determinants of health’ needs to take the time to understand and champion the role social welfare legislation plays – it is at least as significant to peoples health and wellbeing as the NHS.
William Beveridge and the post-war Labour Government recognised that in order to create a fairer society the welfare state had three elements:
- A health service free at point of use
- A social welfare system that ensured that people were protected in times of financial hardship
- Access to good quality housing – in particular the creation of New Towns
As Wikipedia notes the 1948 National Assistance Act followed on from the 1946 National Insurance Act which required all people of working age to pay a weekly contribution in return for access to a wide range of benefits, including Orphans Allowance, Death Grants, Unemployment Benefit, Widows Benefits, Sickness Benefit and Retirement Benefit.
The Act formally abolished the Poor Law and and established a social safety net for those who did not pay National insurance contributions (such as the homeless, the physically disabled, and unmarried mothers) and were therefore left uncovered by the National Insurance Act 1946 and the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946.
It provided help to elderly Britons who required supplementary benefits to make a subsistence living, and obliged local authorities to provide suitable accommodation for those who through infirmity, age, or any other reason were in need of care and attention not otherwise available. The legislation also empowered local authorities to grant financial aid to organisations of volunteers concerned with the provision of recreational facilities or meals.
In this 70th year of the creation of the welfare state:
- There were no celebrations in cathedrals to commemorate its anniversary – despite the significant role our benefits systems plays in keeping people well.
- There were no commemorations of the staff who work in Job Centres and elsewhere who try their best to make an increasingly unjust system work for the benefit of people who needs its support.
The original ambition of Beveridge and the post war government was that access to this system should not be means tested.
If we are serious about prevention and addressing the social determinants of health we need to reconnect with the principles and intellectual integrity of Beveridge and the post war government – its no good just banging on about the NHS
If you have never seen them there are two great Central Office of Information films about the establishment of the NHS and the Welfare Benefit system that were made at the time to explain both of these to the general public they are worth a look!
What do you think?