Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive at Care England, discusses why true collaboration — built on shared goals, clear communication, and community engagement — is essential to securing the future of health and social care.
With each passing year, we seem to face even more challenges in delivering high-quality health and social care. The demographics indicate that the need is rising, while the resources are shrinking. If we are going to deliver what is required for citizens in the 21st century, we are going to have to be much smarter in how we use resources and much more focused on working together to achieve the required goals.
Every year, we see significant pressure on resources, making collaboration not just a nice-to-have, but essential, because services cannot meet demand unless the entire system works effectively together. Delivering this is not a small challenge, and it requires everyone in the system to put aside the needs of their own organisation and to focus exclusively on the outcomes that citizens require. Even if we all pull in the same direction, it is still going to be a significant challenge to meet the needs of a society where more people are living longer and require higher levels of support. If we are to be much more collaborative across the system, a range of things must happen to navigate the choppy waters of bringing various organisations together.
There will be a need for better information flows, and we must establish open lines of communication to share information, expectations, and updates. Regular meetings and updates can help maintain transparency and accountability. Still, we must also create a common language that is stripped of jargon and focuses not on organisational requirements, but on the needs of citizens. So often, fragmentation can be clearly seen in the jargon and language used within organisations. Whether in health or social care, we must step outside this organisation-centred approach and refocus our energy on the person who needs the service and the outcomes they require.
One of the big impediments to integrated care is the way in which organisations work to different requirements. To deliver integrated and seamless care, we must develop shared goals and objectives. Our current approach often sees different organisations having different success criteria, and until we coalesce around shared goals and shared measures, we will never have an integrated system. It is sad to note that in some cases, success measures are not only underlined but they are also conflicting with one another, and success in one area is seen as a failure in another. We need to sweep these conflicts aside and work together on one set of easily identifiable success measures.
Resource sharing must become commonplace, and discussions about who owns what resource should be subsumed into a discussion about the needs of a citizen and how we can fulfil them. In the current system, so much time, energy, and money are spent on gatekeeping resources that people have forgotten that all these different pots of money come from the same source: the pockets of the citizens. As a citizen, you should have the right to expect that the money will be used in ways that support you to live well. If we stopped obsessing over the organisations, we would save billions of pounds, which is currently spent on transactional costs and gatekeeping.
There will be no collaborative care until we see collaborative planning in place. The system must involve independent care providers in planning processes for services and policies. The insights of people who deliver services at the frontline can be valuable in creating effective programs and help identify what works.
Community Engagement is a building block for collaborative care, and we must engage with the community to understand their needs and preferences, ensuring that both local authorities and care providers are aligned with those needs. It should be local communities that are at the centre of developing local support plans, and the more you listen to your communities, the more they will be on your side because you will be delivering what they need and what they want.
By implementing these strategies, local authorities and independent care providers can work together more effectively, ultimately enhancing the quality of care provided to the community.
@ProfMartinGreen @CareEngland
careengland.org.uk
