Health and Social Care

Leading Integration for Quality

July 1, 2015 by Linda White No Comments | Category Uncategorized

Health and Social Care Integration was in the spotlight at this year’s NHSScotland Event in Glasgow. The theme of the event was ‘Leading Integration for Quality’ and it celebrated the new relationship between health and social care that is being embedded across Scotland.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport, Shona Robison opened the event and said from the outset that, as the demographics of our country change, so must the services we provide. Ms Robison went on to say that the event marked the start of a “national conversation” about driving forward improvements in the quality of health and social care.John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy closed the event on day two and said that across the country, we needed to be listening more to what people need and want from health and social care.

Geoff Huggins, Director for Health and Social Care Integration, highlighted the challenges and the opportunities that integration presents and called for delegates to become “Data Cosmologists”. Data Cosmology is the “study” of data which helps us to build a bigger picture and understand the lived experience of service users, as opposed to evaluating one or two services that an individual receives. Geoff concluded by reinforcing that, “behind the word ‘integration’, are real people who need our help”.

Our Integration Hub in the exhibition hall was host to a range of interactive activities over the two days and you couldn’t miss our integration hub team who were kitted out in our branded integration t-shirts.The ‘On the Couch’ sessions put service users and carers in the spotlight and gave them a platform to talk about their personal accounts of health and social care which were heartfelt and honest. One of our guests on the couch was Tommy Whitelaw who talked about caring for his late mother and his mission to raise awareness of dementia.

The ‘Voicebanking’ booth showcased the fascinating work being undertaken by the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (Anne Rowling) Research Regenerative Neurology Clinic and project, the aim of which is to create personalised synthetic voices for people who can no longer use their own voices. At the end of the event our Activity Wall was filled with an array of comments, remarks and feedback from delegates.

We were delighted to have Richard Humphries from the Kings Fund present in our parallel session ‘What is the Evidence for Integration?’ Richard gave a thought-provoking account of what the UK evidence base tells us about how we can achieve better outcomes through integration. He also touched on Scotland’s advantages compared to England and challenged delegates to raise their level of ambition.

All the resources including the sofa videos, vox pop clips, outputs from the parallel session and comments from our activity wall will be available online in due course.

Follow the ongoing conversation about health and social care integration on twitter @ScotGovIRC #listentomyviews #datacosmologists

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