Community health partnerships failing says Scottish watchdog

Audit Scotland is urging the Scottish Government to overhaul the “cluttered landscape of partnerships”.

The spending watchdog has just issued its review of Scotland’s 36 Community Health Partnerships, which were set up in 2004 to bring together health and social care and community and hospital-based services.

The partnerships spend £3bn per annum, 26% of Scotland’s health budget, giving them insufficient clout to attract the participation of GPs.

The authors believed this was crucial to stemming rising emergency hospital admissions among older people and those with drug and alcohol problems.

The report found there was often a lack of clear action planning and performance management.

The boards employ 29,000 NHS staff and over 5,000 social care staff, but many were unable to provide detailed financial information or data on staff turnover and absence rates.

And whilst they acknowledged that partnership working was challenging, especially in the current financial climate, the partnerships could be making better use of resources, with improved information sharing and reduced duplication

New services are sometimes introduced without piloting first, joint roles can be ill-defined and management arrangements for joint teams insufficiently robust.

Nick Johnson, chief executive of the Social Care Association was disappointed that the report focused almost entirely on process and hardly mentioned people who might benefit from the services.

He said health and social services were bound to face difficulties working together as they are governed in such different ways.

“After 7 years, there should be visible benefits to people receiving services from health or social care that can be highlighted as evidence of success.

“The vast majority of health funding is tied up in hospitals which cost a lot of money even if they are empty,” he said.

Mr Johnson believed that local authorities should be placed at the head of these partnerships as they had a better record of financial management and meeting expectations.

“Whatever the next step, a statement of tangible outcomes for people using services should be on the first page for all to see and to which project managers can be held to account,” he said.

Scottish Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said: “Community Health Partnerships have to change.

"Planning care for increasing numbers of older people is one of our biggest national challenges and health boards and councils need to work together far more closely.

“We want to see health and social care for adults delivered in an integrated way by NHS and council social work staff and Community Health Partnerships will have to change to adapt to this.

“The finalised proposals for integration of social care will determine how Community Health Partnerships are developed,” she said.

This article was published on communitycare.co.uk on Friday, June 3, 2011.

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2011/06/03/116941/community-health-partnerships-failing-says-scottish-watchdog.htm