The Better Care Fund (formerly the Integration Transformation Fund) was announced by the Government in June 2013 to drive a transformation in integrated health and social care.
It’s one of the most ambitious ever programmes across the NHS and Local Government, creating a local single pooled budget to incentivise the NHS and local government to work more closely together. The aim is to make the well-being of individuals the focus of health and care services.
In Southend-on-Sea our vision is to create a health and social care economy where residents can access the best care, and enable urgent care to be delivered with maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
We want to build on our current successes in integrated care delivery to ensure that our prevention offer and self-management options are fully developed and optimised. Where longer term care or support is needed, we want to ensure it is provided around the service user/patient.
We are using the Better Care Fund to protect social care services and work as strategic partners to remodel our urgent care and community provision with a focus on out of hospital care. Pressure on A and E along with predicted growth in demand above the national average mean that - in Southend - we are focusing on how to deliver care and support through more integrated and coherent pathways to better serve the people of the city.
In the near future both health and social care will be making changes to improve the way in which we provide health and social care service to patients within Southend. For more detail please see the Better Care Fund Data Sharing page.