Guiding approaches

The 'health and social care integration: joining up care for people, places, and populations' policy paper sets out the Government's plans to make integrated health and social care a reality for everyone across England and to level up access, experience and outcomes across the country.

Key objectives

Joined up care

As people who use health and social care services require ever more joined up care to meet their needs, achieving this will make all the difference both to the quality of care and to the sense of satisfaction for staff. For example, closer working between mental health and social care services can reduce admissions and improve the quality of life for those living with a mental illness.

National priorities

The Government has worked with stakeholders in the development of a framework with a focussed set of national priorities and an approach for prioritising shared outcomes at a local level, focussed on individual and population health and wellbeing.

Ensuring strong leadership and accountability

Criteria for place-level governance and accountability for the delivery of shared outcomes. The key characteristics needed in any model will be for it to develop a clear, shared plan and, crucially, to be able to demonstrate a track record of delivery against agreed shared outcomes over time, underpinned by pooled and aligned resources.

Finance and integration

Local leaders should have the flexibility to deploy resources to meet the health and care needs of their population, as necessary. NHS and local government organisations will be supported and encouraged to do more to align and pool budgets, both to ensure a better use of resources to address immediate needs, but also to support long-term investment in population health and wellbeing.

Digital and data - maximising transparency and personal choice

A core level of digital capability everywhere will be critical to delivering integrated health and care and enabling transformed models of care. When several organisations are involved in meeting the needs of one person, the data and information required to support them should be available in one place, enabling safe and proactive decision making and a seamless experience for people.

Delivering integration through our workforce

The health and social care workforce are our biggest asset, and they are at the heart of wrapping care and support around individuals. We want to ensure that staff feel confident, motivated, and valued in their roles and that they can work together in a person's interests regardless of who they are employed by. Staff should be able to progress their careers across the health and social care family, supporting the skills agenda in their local economy.

How to achieve the key objectives 

To achieve this, integrated care systems will support joint health and social care workforce planning at place level, working with both national and local organisations.

There is a commitment to:

• Improve initial training and on-going learning and development opportunities for staff
• Create opportunities for joint, continuous development and joint roles across health and social care
• Increase the number of clinical practice placements in adult social care for health undergraduates