AHPs as agents of change in health and social care - The National Delivery Plan for the Allied Health Professions in Scotland, 2012 - 2015

1. Professional leadership to drive innovation and delivery

"The integration of services needs to be improved to deliver better health and social care services: services should be characterised by strong and committed clinical and care professional leadership."
Nicola Sturgeon, MSP, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Cities Strategy, 12 December 2011

AHPs have a significant leadership role to play in the integration of health and social care service delivery. New HSCPs as they emerge will need innovative thinking and solutions to underpin their development and to support the transformation of services to be fit for the future.

Doing things differently in what are daunting and unprecedented times requires new ways of working and new ways of thinking. It calls for leadership styles that cut across silos and organisations and address the "here-and-now" issues. The output will be "enabling" services that support people in their own homes and communities through teams that are shaped to work in a truly integrated way

AHP leaders' influence is already high in a number of NHS boards, but AHP directors need to be appropriately positioned to impact on local planning and influence future developments for integration. Their visibility and accountability for delivery of organisational priorities needs to be strengthened through a new and innovative approach to leadership. This will support AHP directors and designated leads of AHPs to have a locus of influence across HSCPs and drive key elements of the nationally agreed outcomes for integration of health and social care services and other national policy directives. A number of health and social care partners are already considering joint appointments for these key posts.

AHPs, with their expertise in enablement and rehabilitation, can bring a fresh perspective to the integration agenda. They need to be working as equal partners alongside their social work, nursing and medical director colleagues towards a common purpose of improving outcomes for people who use services, their families and carers through excellence in professional leadership and practice.

In this way, they can exert influence and bring new thinking and solutions to the challenges of demographic change and sustainability and affordability of services, and to the delivery of more "enabling", rehabilitation and intermediate care services.

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