Health and Social Care Integration

Key Message

Health and Care Integration in Scotland is the most substantial reform of our health and social care services in a generation.

At its heart, health and social care integration will enable services to work together effectively to support people to achieve the outcomes that matter to them. It will ensure that health and social care provision across Scotland is joined-up and seamless, especially for people with long term conditions and disabilities, many of whom are older people. This change in health and social care services is enshrined in law in The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014.

Up until now health boards have delivered health care and local authorities provided social care. Now, within each geographical area, health boards and local authorities are required to establish integrated partnership arrangements. These new Integrated Health and Social Care Partnerships mean that Community Health Partnerships will cease to exist.

You may want to explore some of the work to tranform role here

What does this mean for the Effective Practitioner?

The effective practitioner must consider more than the changing structures of health and care organistions. New ways of working that build on current practice may transform many roles across health and care. Practitioners will work in more intergated ways and develop insight into the various roles in wider multi-disciplinary teams.

You should consider exploring the pages in the signpost sections that link to care providers that you are less familiar with. You may also want to explore the national and governmental resources to keep abreast of these signifianct reforms.

You can download a copy of the Health and Social Care Integration learning activities.

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Learning Activities
- Personal Outcomes
- Partnership and Collaboration
A focus on personal outcomes offers the potential to refocus on what matters to people who use services, with potential benefits for the individuals involved, staff and organisations. A personal outcomes approach prioritises conversations and relationships in achieving the outcomes that people themselves identify as important.
If you are not familiar with this approach you could start by thinking about the questions that you currently routinely ask people you support or care for.
Over the course of a week test out asking people slightly different questions e.g. ‘what matters to you’ or ‘what’s important to you today’ or ‘what would make this a useful conversation for you’. You will need to ask the question in a way that has meaning for the person and that makes sense to you. You could also ask your ask your colleagues how they go about asking this type of question.
Reflect on your experiences e.g. what did you notice? What impact did it have? How comfortable were you using this approach?

To find out more about personal outcomes visit: The Alliance Page

Related KSF core dimensions: service improvement and communication
Think of a person who you know that receives care or support from a number of different organisations. Write the person’s name in the centre of a piece of paper and add all the organisations or people who provide care or support to the person around their name. Reflect on the drawing thinking about:
- How well do you connect with the other services or people you have identified?
- How the picture looks in terms of how services are working together?
- How you could build relationships with the people or organisations you know or understand less well?
Related KSF core dimensions: communication and service improvement.

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Reflection

Remember, recording your reflections is an important part of the learning process. Take time to structure your thoughts, feelings and any future actions on one the forms available in the Reflective Practice section. Click here to visit the page.

In your reflections you could also consider how your learning relates to the Facilitation of Learning, Leadership and Evidence, Research and Development pillars of practice.

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