Issue - meetings

A presentation providing an introduction to the East Sussex Better Together programme.

36.1     The Board considered a presentation by the Programme Director of East Sussex Better Together. The presentation provided an overview of the East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) programme.

36.2    The ESBT programme board is undertaking multiple engagement exercises to ensure that the community is more involved in the co-design and delivery of new integrated services, these include:

• Engaging through the Speak Up forum with the community and voluntary sector, which is recognised as a key stakeholder
• Setting up an advisory group working with 40 different organisations that represent hard to reach groups;
• Developing a generic blueprint of the new community services and taking it to local community forums and asking how it can be tailored for the local residents.

36.3     RESOLVED:

1) to note the presentation;

2) to agree to future update reports on the progress of ESBT as appropriate.

Report by the Assistant Chief Executive

An introduction to this major transformation programme designed to integrate health and social care services in the county and to identify areas for further scrutiny.

37.1     The Committee considered a report of the Assistant Chief Executive on the East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) programme.

37.2     Paula Gorvett, Programme Director East Sussex Better Together, made a presentation to HOSC providing:

·         The background and an overview of the ESBT programme

·         The vision and framework of ESBT

·         A description of the whole system transformation that ESBT aims to achieve in health and social care

·         Aims, challenges and next steps of the ESBT programme.

37.3     In response to questions from HOSC, Paula Gorvett and Ashley Scarff, Head of Commissioning and Strategy, made the following clarifications and responses:

Funding and decision making

• ESBT is ‘apolitical’ and therefore unlikely to be significantly affected by the outcome of the general election. The programme is in keeping with the principals of the NHS Five Year Forward View, which has support amongst all of the main national political parties. All of the main national parties have indicated support for the integration of health and social care and the move towards adopting preventative health and wellbeing strategies.
• All commissioning decisions are taken by the governing bodies of the constituent commissioning organisations: the three Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and East Sussex County Council (ESCC).  To ensure that the commissioning bodies are making collective investment decisions, an underlying governance structure for ESBT has been established which provides a shared forum for the commissioning organisations to meet and discuss spending decisions. During the process so far, discussions have been focussed on how resources are spent rather than who has the budget.
• The ESBT governance structure should help to overcome the significant challenge of re-organising services whilst recognising that healthcare is free at the point of delivery and social care is based on needs assessments and eligibility criteria. The work that the four commissioning organisations have undertaken over the past six months to develop a shared vision is evidence of the effectiveness of ESBT.

New services created as part of ESBT

• The Single Point of Access delivery model involves bringing a number of access point services currently provided by ESCC and ESHT under a single management structure to form an integrated and responsive service. The new service will require additional staff, training, education and professional supervision to become fully operational. The service begins in April 2015 and is funded by investment from the Better Care Fund.
• Planning is underway (until October 2015) for the integrated community health and social care teams based on patient and provider feedback of the existing services. Integrated community teams will be responsible for clearly defined populations and, as far as possible, will be based within their designated local community.
• The community services procurement that High Weald Lewes Havens (HWLH) CCG is currently undertaking has a built in requirement that the winning provider must integrate into the wider health and social care system, including working alongside, and performing some of the functions of, the integrated community health and social care teams.
• A large range of self-management and self-care services are already available to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37