Blog

Towards a new deal for people with long term conditions

The Coalition for Collaborative Care (C4CC) formally launched today at the Future of Health Conference – a major event in the Health calendar – and addressed this year by NHS England’s Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, following recent publication of the NHS Five Year Forward View.

We want this launch to light the blue touch paper for big changes in how people with long term conditions and professionals work together to produce better lives.

We have launched our Vision for the Future, but of course the future has to start now. Over the past couple of months I’ve met with many health professionals and many people with long term conditions.

I think there is a mutual recognition of great potential for new and better ways that people’s expertise can come together for improved outcomes. But this is accompanied by frustration that the promising practice that can be seen in patches around the country is not quickly becoming mainstream.

C4CC wants to work with those determined to move person-centred collaborative care from the margins to the centre of practice and experience. How will we do this? Our approach might be summed up as “Supporting the doers, changing the conditions”.

Changing the conditions will involve attention to workforce development, providing powerful evidence and pulling the system levers to drive positive change in practice. This will be of vital importance in achieving the kind of paradigm shift we are looking for – but it won’t be enough. The bottom line is that the health and care workforce and the people who use the health and care system will increasingly need to change their ways of working and interacting so that they can get the win-wins that person centred approaches can provide.

People will need help to do this and C4CC aims to be an important part of that help. We want to support the building of a powerful movement for change among both practitioners and people living with long term conditions and give this movement the tools, connections and support it needs to help fully realise the potential for person centred care and support.

We know that this can’t be simply mandated by policymakers or system leaders, it has to be built by the people delivering and using health and care services. That is why the partners and members of C4CC will be people and organisations who don’t represent a single part of the system but bring together a wide coalition that can have impact in all key areas and at all levels – with people living with long-term conditions at the heart, energising positive change.

We will be taking a “depth and breadth” approach to supporting the “doers”. As well as playing an important part in key developments that will shape the future of health – like the Integrated Personal Commissioning Programme – we will be looking for all opportunities to get significant support targeted to those local systems showing clear commitment to transform practice and to the people with long term conditions contributing to this. Sometimes this will involve partners of the Coalition taking direct initiatives, alone or in partnership with others with C4CC, at other times we will aim to direct resources and support emerging from NHSE and other programmes.

At a breadth level we want to support members to become better informed, to link together for support and develop their ability to have positive local impact. We will be consulting members on how best to do this but we expect to support in various ways including through provision of targeted information and tools, establishment of networks and the identification and activation of champions nationally and locally.

We are confident that the unique nature of our coalition – bringing key organisations and people from across the system and with lived experience into the room together with a clear focus and purpose – models the change we are trying to make.

We believe we can have a real impact. But for deep, large scale change to happen we need all those who believe there is real potential for person centred collaborative care to transform people’s experience and use resources better to join us on this journey.

Martin Routledge

Martin Routledge is NHS England’s Director of the Coalition of Collaborative Care.

He has worked in public services for 33 years, twenty of them spent working mostly for and with local government – often leading integrated social care and health teams and initiatives and incorporating periods of academic work and teaching in higher education.

From 2002-11, at the Department of Health, Martin played a leading role in the development of the personalisation agenda initially in social care and then extending to health.

From 2008-11 he led the national Department of Health Putting People First initiative.

After leaving the Department Martin led the establishment and was first manager of the Think Local Act Personal national leadership partnership for personalisation and was Head of Operations for the charity In Control – which pioneered personalisation across public services.

Leave a Reply to Stuart Brown Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

12 comments

  1. Julia Micklewright says:

    Please tell me what is C4CC’s next step towards improving the quality of life for people with long term conditions.

    I represent adults with Asperger’s syndrome (pat of the autistic spectrum) and despite the Autism Act 2009 there is a long long way to go in improving understanding and awareness of autism.

    Julia

  2. Michael Bond says:

    In principle I welcome the concerted effort to prioritise coordinated care.
    Will this collaboration make use of previous good material that evolved through Single Assessment Process, Common Assessment Framework and, more recently, structured care planning?
    Involvement of service users in their care needs, goals and supporting activity is undeniably important, but so is the need for structured content to support interoperability and machine readable plans to assist both providers of care as well as empower accessibility.
    Please do not overlook the multiple wells of knowledge we already have.

  3. Eilleen Tipper says:

    The changes proposed are vital if people with LTC are to be able to effectively manage their own condition but as important as working with the elderly and adult working population it is essential to work with children and young people to develop their self-management skills and healthy life-styles. Working with children and young people should decrease the number of co-morbidities per patient, improve their self esteem, raise their achievement and improve their longevity.
    Some of this work could be done through the schools which would also improve levels of understanding in the general population.

  4. Paul Munim says:

    This is a welcome development as we need more joining up to bring together services for people with long term conditions. We would also like to see more involvement from local community organisations because they provide local services which many people with long term conditions will access. Our website http://www.useyourcommunity.com is a database of local community organisations that people with long term conditions are using to find their local organisations in order to access local services. We believe more publicity is needed to enable people with long term conditions to realise there are organisations that can support their needs and how to contact them.

  5. Stuart Brown says:

    Sing For Your Life already supports older people who are lonely, socially isolated or living with Dementia, COPD,the effects of stroke and COPD by providing participatory singing programmes. We work in hospitals, residential care homes, community centres and support people living at home.

    Our work has been the subject of a Randomised Controlled Trial which demonstrated an improvement in well being.Tthe findings will be published shortly in The British Journal of Psychiatry.

    We welcome this initiative.

  6. Anonymous says:

    Can you get involved with this as a lay person . I care for my brother who has Huntington’s disease . Thanks

  7. Ad V Cate says:

    My son has complex and unstable long term conditions. His social and health care needs are not at all joined up. He does not have the cognitive ability to manage his conditions himself. His GP is at best bewildered. What is the coalition for collaborative care going to do to help him and others like him?

    I look forward to hearing from you.

  8. K says:

    I see that C4CC is closing in December 2014. Will the new alliance in social care and health continue?

    • NHS England says:

      The Coalition for Collaborative Care will not be closing in December 2014. We have received funding for the period up until March 2015. It is anticipated that this will continue for the next financial year.

  9. Richard Byrnes says:

    Does this approach include the deaf who have a long term condition?

    • NHS England says:

      Dear Richard,

      Yes. All of the Coalition’s work is conducted in partnership with its co-production group, consisting of people with long-term conditions and carers of individuals with long-term conditions.

      Kind regards,

      NHS England