Agenda item

To consider the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Partnership’s Draft Integrated Care Strategy and provide comments and feedback to help further develop the strategy.

The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) were required to form a joint committee with partner local authorities termed the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP). The ICP was an equal partnership which aimed to join-up how health and care was supported across the region. The ICP would bring together a range of organisations, including voluntary, community and independent organisations to work together to improve the health and wellbeing of people who live in the region.

A key duty of the ICP was to produce an Integrated Care Strategy, setting out how the assessed needs of the local population would be met, including social care, primary and secondary care, physical and mental health, and health related service across the whole population regardless of age.

Peter Rooney, the ICB’s Director of Strategy and Planning, presented a draft Integrated Care Strategy and invited the Board to provide him with their comments. The draft strategy was very much evolving and would benefit from any feedback. The ICP would develop the strategy in light of views gathered as part of engagement during November with a view to presenting it at the next ICP meeting in December.

Members of the Board offered the following comments:

a)  It was difficult to disagree with the contents of the Strategy;

b)  the Board were comforted that its own Joint Local Health & Wellbeing Strategy, “Equally Well: A healthier, fairer future for North Tyneside 2021-25” and its implementation plan were aligned to, and picked up the themes contained within, the Integrated Care Strategy;

c)  the narrative associated with the presentation of the Strategy sounded top down but ought to reflect the reality that place has primacy and that there was a bottom up approach to determining how the assessed needs of local populations would be met;

d)  the emphasis on supporting carers was welcomed and the value in identifying young carers was highlighted;

e)  there was concern as to what the goals set out in the Strategy meant for North Tyneside when in some instances the ambitions set out were already near to being achieved in the borough. Having achieved these things North Tyneside aspired to make further improvements but there was concern that the area might lose out in terms of not being a priority within the overall system;

f)   the strategy omitted reference to the immediate pressures within the system for example treatment waiting times and the availability of dentistry services;

g)  the Board queried whether the preparation of the Strategy would be accompanied with bidding for additional resources to tackle the inequalities in the region;

h)  the Board also queried how the ICP might strengthen mechanisms for sharing good practice across the region;

i)    from an older person’s perspective there were two major issues requiring consideration. There appeared to be less tolerance in society with more anti-social behaviour and so people needed to be treated in the right way and the role of communities and neighbourhoods needed to be emphasised to tackle social isolation as many older people were reluctant to leave their homes following the Covid-19 pandemic. This was likely to lead to increased demand on adult social care services in the future.

The Board acknowledged the statutory requirement for an Integrated Care Strategy, commended the ICP for preparing the draft documents in the required timescales and noted that an area Integrated Care Partnership for Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside and Gateshead would also be developed from the respective place based arrangements.

Resolved that (1) the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Partnership’s draft Integrated Care Strategy be noted; and

(2) the comments set out above be referred to the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Partnership to be taken into account in finalising its Strategy.