Achieving a fully integrated Health & Social Care team in North Yorkshire

Overview

Work to support the independent care sector in preventing and managing Covid outbreaks in North Yorkshire helped expedite a pilot to deliver an integrated approach to Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement between York Place Health & Care Partnership (HNYHCP) and North Yorkshire Council (NYC). The organisations collaborated to establish a single integrated team to support care providers and market sustainability.

Objectives

• Develop additional capability within the team through shared learning of good practice and skills
• Greater understanding of colleagues roles and cultures within the individual organisations to improve collaborative working and maximise opportunities
• Provide a single point of contact for care providers, improving access to timely support, advice and expertise
• Improve communication with and between care providers
• Strengthen the voice of care providers to give them equal parity in the local health network

Approach

The two teams integrated under single leadership to establish joint working and align work priorities, with an initial focus on supporting staff well-being; team building, trust, credibility; and bringing clarity to roles and remit. This would ensure the team could work on forming new ways of working and look for innovation and opportunities. The pilot aimed to assimilate different workplace cultures including language, terminology and acronyms, and overcome barriers such as different governance processes and IT systems.

Results

Bringing the teams together into a cohesive unit brought several benefits to staff, care providers, residents and the wider health and care system. Care providers reported feeling better supported, with improved relationships across the team. The team were able to focus on developing joined approaches to reducing the number of provider failures in the system and improving market sustainability as part of wider improvements within the local authority concerned with the implementation of a new quality pathway structure. Swift early response to provider challenges by a team with a diverse skill set across health and social care benefitted the population.

Lessons Learnt

The integration of two teams is a long-term endeavour, which requires a consistent leadership approach to develop a joint culture and mindset. The impact of the intervention was significant, it transformed how the council works within the local health system and vice versa. It has unlocked the wider network for care providers to improve and build better relationships. Significantly, care providers felt the benefit of an integrated support team as a single point of access. This provided opportunities to strengthen and develop relationships and further opportunities to innovate and develop quality of care identified.

Recommendations

To achieve integration and improve collaboration between health and social care teams the following recommendations have been identified by the team:

• Establishing further joint offer to the sector, work plans and outcomes
• Further develop joint resources and reference material
• To integrate digital systems and applications alongside integrating teams
• Strengthen internal communication and further develop positive workplace culture
• The establishment of learning placements in social care for nursing students
• To raise the profile of nursing in social care and career opportunities for care professionals
• Increased collaboration/ inclusion into the team by other MDT roles e.g. social care pharmacist
• To embed patient safety specialist links to improve learning for health and social care together following incident

Contact Information

Sarah Fiori, Principal Nurse, NYC, Head of QI, HNYYHCP, sarah.fiori@nhs.net

“Social care is defined and specialised work; when support is truly combined with health, residents benefit from a more holistic approach to their care. I’d like to see social care recognised for its own merits and appreciated for its own unique skill set within these types of team structures”