Agenda item

Presentation by Elaine Torrance, Interim Chief Officer, Health & Social Care Integration.

The Chairman welcomed Mrs Elaine Torrance to the meeting to give a presentation on the Scottish Borders Health and Social Care Partnership.  Mrs Torrance explained that she had recently taken over the joint post of Chief Officer, Health and Social Care Integration, on an interim basis.  She explained the background to the integration of health and social care services, the framework for which was provided by the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014.  She explained the need to seamlessly deliver health and social care services with greater focus on prevention, early intervention, resilient communities and a locality based approach.  The strategic plan in the Scottish Borders contained nine local objectives with 18 projects funded via the Integrated Care Fund.  Diagrams within the presentation showed a tiered model of partnership projects and new person-centred models of configuration of services.  Mrs Torrance drew attention to two principle initiatives.  Community led support would be about putting what mattered first to the people of the Borders; making health and social care more visible in communities; building on people’s skills and community assets; providing early intervention and prevention; and would better target the time of professionals.  The two test sites of Burnfoot Community Hub and Ettrick Valley had been identified for this initiative and staff representatives, service users and members of the public would be part of the planning groups to take this forward.  The second initiative, known as Buurtzorg, was based on a nursing model of care which originated in the Netherlands.  There would be close collaboration with GPs and health and social care professionals with a focus on prevention.  Test sites were still to be agreed for this project.  Within the locality approach three Locality Co-ordinators would be responsible for developing five Locality Plans for health and social care services in the Scottish Borders.  There were staff, service user and carer and public representation on all the Locality Working Groups which had been operating since September 2016.  The Performance Monitoring Health and Social Care Delivery Plan, published in December 2016, focused action around three key areas, namely: reducing inappropriate use of hospital services; shifting resources to primary and community care; and supporting capacity of community care.   Mrs Torrance advised that the next steps would be to carry out further communication and engagement and to develop involvement with communities.  She encouraged members of the Forum to take part in the consultation on the locality plans which would take place during the summer. As part of the discussion and questions following the presentation, reference was made to the significant challenges around transport in rural communities and its link to social care and health issues.   Mrs Torrance confirmed that some of the fund for integration would be used to develop a Transport Hub to facilitate more organised and flexible provision of transport to health and care centres.  With regard to the challenge around recruitment and retention of homecare staff, Mrs Torrance explained that rates of pay were being increased and work was being carried out to raise the profile of the occupation with the aim of making this a positive career choice for young people.  The Chairman thanked Mrs Torrance for her presentation and it was noted that copies of all the presentations given to the Area Forum would be circulated by email to members following the meeting.

DECISION

NOTED the presentation.

MEMBER

Councillor Moffat joined the meeting during the presentation below.