Responding to the announcement of the Health and Care Bill in the
Queen’s Speech, Cllr Paulette Hamilton, Vice Chair of the Local
Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said:
“We support an equal partnership approach
to improving health and wellbeing, health and care services and
ensuring the best use of resources, through the Integrated Care
Board and an ICS Health and Care
Partnership.
“There should be local flexibility, with
health and local government leaders working as equal partners, to
establish the ICS Health and Care Partnership in a way that works
for each area and builds on existing effective
partnerships.
“We believe that the proposed Health and
Care plan for each system should have a broad objective of
improving the health of the population and reducing health
inequalities, which will involve a wide range of strategies and
services across the public, private and community sector. It is
vital that there is a balance of power between the NHS Board and
the Health and Care Partnership.
“We are disappointed at the lack of
consideration of children and young people’s health in the white
paper. In adopting a population health approach, Integrated Care
Systems (ICSs) will need to work closely with public health in
local government, education, early years services and the private
and voluntary sector to improve the health and wellbeing of
children and young people. Getting support right from pregnancy
and early childhood will have lifelong impacts and needs a far
higher priority, due to its long-term
benefits.
“We strongly support that, wherever
possible, the ICS footprint matches that of councils with adult
social care responsibilities. We urge government to resolve any
problematic ICS footprints at the earliest opportunity through a
transparent transition process, involving all relevant councils
and NHS organisations.
“ICSs will also need support to ensure
that decisions will be taken at the most local appropriate level,
based on existing place-based partnerships, in particular Health
and Wellbeing Boards.”
