The role of the Health and Wellbeing Board is to:
- Encourage integrated working between commissioners of health services, to public health and social care services.
- Encourage those who provide services related to wider effects of health, so such as housing, to work closely with the Health and Wellbeing Board.
- Lead on the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) and Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS) including involving users and the public in their development.
- Be involved throughout the process as Clinical Commissioning Groups
- Develop their commissioning plans and ensure that they take proper account of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy when developing these plans.
- We are also working with local organisations to further improve and integrate health and care services as part of the Sefton Partnership.
Joining up Health and Social Care in Sefton
We are creating a new Integrated Care Partnership to improve services, outcomes and experience for all borough residents.
Organisations across Sefton are coming together to establish a new health and care partnership that will strengthen the way they work together for the benefit of borough residents.
For some years now we have been working increasingly closely as health and care partners, and this new development will greatly build on our successes so far. It will also help us to deliver our shared aims of both the Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the local five year plan for the NHS, Sefton2gether.
| The Health And Wellbeing Strategy 2020 2025 |  (pdf 5.81MB) |
| Sefton2gether Final Print Version 2020 (1) | (pdf 3.59MB) |
The Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) will bring together Sefton Council, all local NHS, voluntary, community and faith (VCF) groups and other organisations involved in improving health and care in the borough as members of the Health and Wellbeing Board.
Partners in Sefton want to create a more joined up local system that meets the needs of all the people who live in Sefton in line with our shared vision:
“To deliver a confident and connected borough that offers the things we all need to start, live and age well, where everyone has a fair chance of a positive and healthier future.”
From speaking with residents over the past few years – including during the production of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy, Sefton2gether and the council’s 2030 vision – it has been clear that these priorities for future health and care have been important to them too.
What this means for you
There are already many examples of how this approach is beginning to make a difference to the lives of those who live in Sefton, including improvements to intermediate care and care homes, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve care for their residents and provide support for their staff.
Joined up working has also seen the setup of eight Integrated Care Teams (ICTs)ICTs are made up of a wide range services and professionals such as social workers, council locality teams, nurses, GP led primary care network representatives, mental health practitioners and VCF sector professionals. They come together to discuss the differing needs of their cases individually, so each person’s support is more tailored, better co-ordinated across different services and effective.
Cllr Ian Moncur, Cabinet Member for health and wellbeing in Sefton and chair of Sefton Health and Wellbeing Board, said: “We have a history of strong working relationships between organisations in Sefton and the creation of an Integrated Care Partnership will further this approach and allow us to make greater strides to improve outcomes for our residents and better tackle the inequalities that exist in health and care in our different communities.”
Fiona Taylor, Chief Officer of both Clinical Commissioning Groups in Sefton, accountable for the majority of NHS commissioning in the borough, said: “Now more than ever before, health and care services need to work closely together to secure better results for our local people and that’s what Sefton’s Integrated Care Partnership will enable us to do by breaking down the structural barriers that can sometimes make this difficult. This is an exciting developed, which builds on the good progress we have made together in recent years and that will help us achieve more in the future.”
Deborah Butcher, Executive Director of Adult Social Care and Health and Place Lead for the development of the Integrated Care Partnership said: “By collaborating to make the best use of our resources and by working together with our GP’s, residents, health and care professionals, housing and public health we can improve health and care for people, no matter which community of Sefton they live in. It will also help us to do more to involve our residents in their own health and care and in this work as it progresses.”
How our ICP will work
Development of an ICP in Sefton aligns to the proposed new systems laid out in the Health and Social Care White Paper called Working together to improve health and social care for all which was published in February 2021 and which describes the important role of local ‘places’, or ICP areas.
It means that Sefton’s ICP will be one of nine other ‘places’ that will make up a wider Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS). Here, integrated working between partners across the entire ICS will be made easier through changes set out in the White Paper with the overall aim of achieving better health and wellbeing for everyone, better quality of health services for all individuals and sustainable use of NHS resources.
As well as joining up and co-ordinating services around people’s needs, Sefton’s ICP will also be focused around understanding and working with communities, addressing social and economic factors that influence health and wellbeing and supporting quality and sustainability of local services.
A task and finish group is leading the development of the ICP with representation from all partners involved in health and care in the borough.
| Strategic Task & Finish Group Membership | (pdf 120KB) |
Next steps
Sefton’s ICP is beginning to operate in shadow form with the goal of becoming established from April 2022, when it is expected that the White Paper will pass into a Bill and become law from the same date. It will work as part of both Sefton’s Health and Wellbeing Board and the wider Cheshire and Merseyside ICS.