Working together for city
INITIATIVE AIMS TO IMPROVE HEALTH, WEALTH AND WELLBEING
A NEW partnership is seeking to improve the health, wealth and wellbeing of everyone in Newcastle and transform the city’s health and social care provision.
Collaborative Newcastle is an alliance between Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle City Council, Newcastle Gateshead NHS Clinical Commissioning Group and Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, working closely with Newcastle GP Services, the GP Federation for Newcastle, Primary Care Networks and the voluntary sector.
It is the first partnership of its kind in the country and is underpinned by a groundbreaking legal agreement between the four key health and social care organisations in the city.
The agreement, which sets out a formal co-governance structure, accelerates progress towards a fully integrated health and social care system, enabling the partners to effect significant change for residents.
Their aim is to reduce widening inequalities, by preventing avoidable problems from arising and tackling the big things that hold some people back.
The legal agreement has now been signed off by each organisation’s independent board, as well as by Newcastle City Council’s Cabinet. Newcastle City Futures Board will meet this afternoon to formally endorse Collaborative Newcastle’s ambitious plans.
Dame Jackie Daniel, chief executive at Newcastle Hospitals, said: “We’re delighted that Collaborative Newcastle has the full backing of the City Futures Board. By working together in this way, we can reduce inequality and provide better life opportunities for everyone in our city – which will be more critical than ever as we recover from the impact of Covid-19.”
Collaborative Newcastle partners have been at the heart of the city’s Covid response in recent months, including the development and delivery of the new Integrated Covid Hub North East.
However, work to establish the partnership and initiate a number of joint projects got under way more than 12 months earlier.
Pat Ritchie, chief executive at Newcastle City Council, said: “Work to integrate our health and social care services and to work collaboratively to eliminate social inequalities was underway well before the pandemic and allowed us to move agilely in our battle against the virus.
“Working in partnership with organisations to make better use of our collective resources will ensure all our residents live healthy, fulfilling lives and achieve their potential.”
Mark Adams, chief officer at NHS Newcastle Gateshead Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “The pandemic has shown the immense strength of our city with all partner organisations pulling together and working as one.
“Supporting our most vulnerable citizens through quick decision-making and rapid responses while keeping our staff safe, our partnership is far more than the sum of its parts.”
Collaborative Newcastle partners are working on ways to improve the delivery and access of health and social care across the city. These include: Integrated Covid Hub North East Led by Collaborative Newcastle, the region secured the funds to develop the Integrated Covid Hub North East. The hub will transform test and trace capabilities, is creating 1,000 new jobs and will lead the way in Covid science and research via a specialist innovation lab.
Supporting care homes
Partners quickly came together at the start of the pandemic to provide staff and residents in care homes with invaluable, ongoing support. This work has included outbreak control training, accessing PPE, daily calls providing advice, practical updates and best practice guidance, and expanding nursing teams.
Newcastle Children and Families This project is creatively redesigning a better integrated approach to early intervention and prevention for families facing challenges in the city. Central to this approach, the project team is planning to build on the strong community support available to children, young people and their families by developing plans for community hubs, joined-up services and a single ‘go to’ contact for families in need of support.
Social prescribing at scale
Plans are in development to dramatically increase the scale and scope of social prescribing across the city. Social prescribing is designed to support people with a wide range of social, emotional and practical needs by connecting them with local sources of support which will help to improve both mental health and physical wellbeing.
Positive Mental Health
Collaborative Newcastle partners are working together to design new ways of delivering mental health support, built around local communities, to enable simpler, more open access to support when it is needed.
This work will be co-designed and developed with local communities, starting from next year.
Joint System Leadership Training
A joint system leadership training programme has been established across the health and social care organisations and is both delivered and undertaken by staff from all of the organisations involved.
The programme is designed to provide professional development, build stronger working relationships, better understanding and embed closer joint working for the future.
Central Command Centre
A central command centre has been set up at Regent’s Point, providing a space for health and social care operational teams to co-locate and a hub for staff to hot-desk and meet.
The command centre has continued to operate virtually throughout the pandemic and a new digital dashboard has been created, displaying real-time health and social care data from across the city to inform effective decisionmaking.
Other partners in the city are making their own commitment to improving health, wealth and wellbeing.
Developing alongside the focus on health and social care is the work of partners, including the city’s universities and private sector, to drive sustainable growth and prosperity.
Having mapped the city’s current key challenges and identified relevant indicators, city partners are developing plans to address these challenges and drive growth through innovation, with a focus on shared economic priorities.