For increasing numbers of people, health and wellbeing is no longer a sub-conscious state requiring episodic contact with health services to fix something that is broken. Instead, it is a matter of active and ongoing – often lifelong – intervention and management, requiring varying degrees of support from families, communities, and health and care services. This is true at all ages – from families with a child with a disability to adults managing long-term conditions, and most frequently, frail older people.
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1 comment
Comment by Mike Orton posted on
For many years there has been talk about greater integration between Health and Social Services and still this has not been achieved. From the ground up it is proving very difficult whether it is practical in not sharing the same IT systems, internal culture in not sharing the same approach, financial in not sharing the same budgets or national policy in that Health is free at the point of delivery whilst Social Care need is assessed and of course recent changes at the Primary Care level have added to the mix. Until these basic issues are resolved integration will be very difficult.
I have worked with Health and Social Care and from my experience the front line staff are usually very happy to work alongside colleagues from the other services, it is just these barriers to full integration which need to be addressed.