Integrated health and social care in England

Guide for nursing staff providing an overview of the fourteen integrated care pioneer programmes introduced in England in 2013; it looks at some of the ways nursing staff are reportedly working within the programmes as well as how the pioneers are to be evaluated and learning disseminated.

The RCN is in principle supportive of integrated health and social care but is mindful of the impact its implementation will have on nursing; in particular on roles and workload, workforce planning and funding arrangements. Ongoing learning dissemination and formal evaluations of the pioneers will therefore be essential to gauge this impact but with the preliminary national evaluation not due to end until mid 2015 it will be some time before its findings are made available. It will also be interesting to see if integration continues as small scale locally tailored initiatives or whether the pooling of complete budgets will prompt a more standardised national adoption of a basic integrated way of working between the two sectors. We will monitor the evaluation and feedback process closely but in the meantime plan to survey our members who are involved in the pioneers to gain the nursing staff perspective of how integrated health and social services are developing in practice.

For further information, please email papa.ukintl.dept@rcn.org.uk