Health and Social Care integration: progress review

Annex A – Joint Statement

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport

Jeane Freeman MSP

T: 0300 244 4000

E: scottish.ministers@gov.scot

NHS Board Chairs

Local Authority Leaders

Integration Joint Board Chairs and Vice Chairs

NHS Board Chief Executives

Local Authority Chief Executives

Integration Joint Board Chief Officers

Chief Executive, SCVO

Chief Executive, Health and Social Care Alliance

Chief Executive, CCPS

Chief Executive, Scottish Care

26 September 2018

Dear colleagues

The Scottish Government, NHS Scotland and COSLA share responsibility for ensuring
the successful integration of Scotland’s health and social care services. We are therefore delighted to send to you today a joint statement, attached to this letter, setting out our shared commitment to integration as leaders in the public sector.

This statement is the first output from our review of integration, which is now underway via the Ministerial Strategic Group for Health and Community Care. It frames our joint ambitions for integration and sets the context for recommendations that will follow from the review.

We look forward to continuing to work with you all to deliver integration, and, through it, better care for people using health and social care services in Scotland.

JEANE FREEMAN COUNCILLOR ALISON EVISON

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport COSLA President

DELIVERING INTEGRATION

We need to step up the pace of integrating health and social care. Truly integrated services, focused on the needs of citizens – individuals, carers and families, and on the health and wellbeing of local communities – require our leadership and personal commitment. We need to act together and in our individual roles to accelerate progress.

There are challenges that we must address. We will work together, and with our local populations as well as partners in the third and independent sectors, to understand public expectations and better meet needs for health and social care, which go hand-in-hand with improvements in life expectancy and the availability of new medicines and technologies. We are already making progress. We recognise that we are jointly responsible for tackling these challenges and that we need to adapt, compromise and support one another to deliver integration for the people of Scotland.

The Public Bodies (Joint Working) Act 2014 puts in place governance and financial arrangements, and a set of outcomes, for us to work within to achieve integration. We share a duty to empower Integration Authorities, to hold ourselves and one another to account in order to make integration work. We will learn from one another and adopt good practice. We will also work collaboratively and in partnership beyond the statutory sector to deliver improvements.

We commit to delivering together because that is the right way to deliver better services for our citizens.

CABINET SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND SPORT

COSLA PRESIDENT

DIRECTOR GENERAL, SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE DIRECTORATES AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE, NHSSCOTLAND

CHIEF EXECUTIVE, COSLA

CHAIR, SOLACE

26 SEPTEMBER 2018