Agenda item

To receive an update in relation to the Integrated Care Partnership.

Tom Shakespeare (Director of Brent Integrated Care Partnership) introduced the update on the development of the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP). He highlighted that the ICP was an opportunity to put weight behind primary care as the frontline of the health service, and the paper explored how to embed primary care as leaders in the system. The recommendations in the paper had been produced following engagement with the ICP executive and PCN directors in the initial phase, which formed the first stage of the work. Those recommendations were; putting patients and citizens at the heart of joint working and re-establishing a joint vision driven by primary care; reaffirming shared delivery commitments and looking at the work streams that had been developed with the ICP, primary care, and community; championing a person-centred approach; exploring the support and wraparound services community health and social care could provide within primary care; focusing on ARRS roles; addressing health inequalities; and improving recruitment and retention. The ICP were also looking at how to hold itself to account and develop a shared culture, building awareness in the community across all service areas such as how to access services, what services were available, and addressing the GP access scrutiny recommendations.

The Chair invited comments and questions from those present, with the following issues raised:

·         The Chair invited Councillor Daly to contribute to the meeting. She asked what the relationship was with Health Education England in introducing pharmacists, nurses and paramedics into primary care as part of their training during their student period. The Chair advised that there were programmes working with secondary care for training, which GPs helped with, similarly with pharmacists and physicians, supported by Health Education England. The ICP had a Training Hub Lead working hard to encourage GPs to take on student nurses and train them, although there was a workforce issue whereby there were not enough GPs to be released to become educators. The ICP were aware of this and were taking on the challenge as a system. There were also challenges with taking on paramedics in primary care, where the ICP had been asked not to recruit paramedics due to demand in acute and ambulance services. Going forward, the aim was for paramedics to take on a dual role working with the acute trust and GP practices, which was being planned with Health Education England. Basu Lamichaane (Brent Nursing and Residential Care Sector) advised that there were care homes in Brent providing nursing placements with the University of West London and 200 nurses had been supported through that scheme with very good feedback. It was agreed Basu could be put in touch with the Training Hub Manager to look into how this scheme could be further utilised. Dr Melanie Smith (Director of Public Health, Brent Council) highlighted that Health Education England worked to national levels which was less flexible than it could be, but hoped that the work the Integrated Care System (ICS) were doing, with its larger influence, would be a way to increase the responsiveness of Health Education England to enable more training opportunities. Other challenges were the difficulties recruiting nurses due to the withdrawal of the nursing bursary and the difficulty for aspiring GPs getting placements. The ICP had been able to secure additional funding for areas it wanted to develop.

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the update.