Strategic plans: guidance - easy read version

Health and Social Care Integration : Strategic Plans: Guidance : Easy Read Version

About this Easy Read document

Strategic plans are documents which say what is going to happen and how it is going to happen.

This Easy Read document will tell you about the things that must happen when new strategic plans are being written for:

• health services
• social work services
• social care services

Health services are things like appointments with:

• doctors
• dentists
• hospitals

Social work services are things like support from social workers for anyone who needs it.

Social care services help people with daily living so they can be as independent as possible.

It is called statutory guidance.

This means it:

• says what must happen
• is helpful
• is about the law

This statutory guidance is for everyone who:

• plans for these kinds of services

• chooses these kind of services

Making a strategic plan

A strategic plan must do these 2 things.

1. It must say how services are going to work together in each large area.

These large areas are called health and social care partnership areas.

Health and Social Care Partnerships were started so that local NHS and Council services work better together.

Each health and social care partnership area must be split into smaller local areas.

The plan must say what will happen for each smaller local area.

2. It must say how it will help with the health and wellbeing aims that the whole of Scotland is working towards.

Health and wellbeing means things like:

• our happiness
• our health
• our mental health

Having a Strategic Planning Group and getting more people to help

There must a be a special group which works to write the Strategic Plan.

This group is called a Strategic Planning Group.

Each Health and Social Care Partnership must have one.

Some Strategic Planning Groups will need to have people from:

• the local authority – or council
• the health board

Lots of different people from different interested organisations should help too.

This includes:

• people who get health or social care
• carers
• businesses which give services
• other organisations which give services
• health and social care staff
• social housing organisations

Writing a strategic plan

1. First all the ideas should be collected. The Strategic Planning Group should help decide what needs to go into the Strategic Plan.

2. Then a draft Strategic Plan should be written.

In this document, a draft means an early stage of writing, which might get changed later.

3. Then the Strategic Planning Group should have a close look at the draft plan to see what they think.

4. Next the Health and Social Care Partnership must write a better draft plan. They must send it to lots of people to check it.

It is very important that everyone gets a chance to see the draft plan – including communities and staff.

Sharing the strategic plan when it is finished

Health and Social Care Partnerships must publish their Strategic Plans.

Publish means to:

• show
• share
• put on a website
• print out paper copies

Health and Social Care Partnerships must also write a special report at the same time.

The special report must tell everyone how they collected all the ideas in the plan.

Checking the strategic plan

Checking how something is going is also called reviewing.

Each review must look at:

• the health and wellbeing aims that the whole of Scotland is working towards
• the aims of integration – services working together
• what the Strategic Planning Group thinks

Health and Social Care Partnerships must check on how well the plan is going every 3 years.

They must look at:

• Scotland's health and wellbeing aims
• the main aims of giving good health and social care
• what the Strategic Planning Group says

Health and Social Care Partnerships must also write a report every year that says how well services are happening.

This is called a performance report.