Pioneering Southend-on-Sea Continues Drive For Improved Care

July 2, 2015 by Southend Borough Council

Pioneering Southend-on-Sea Continues Drive For Improved Care

Friday 3rd July 2015

A leading councillor and one of Southend’s most senior social workers have welcomed plans for GPs and social workers to share information about the services patients in the borough are receiving. Cllr James Moyies, Executive Cllr for Adult Social Care and Carol Cranfield, Principal Social Worker and Caldicott Guardian at Southend Council, said it will mean family doctors and social workers will be able to join up their services for the first time, reducing the risk of avoidable hospital admissions.

Cllr James Moyies, Executive Councillor for Health and Adult Social Care, said: “We know we can deliver our services in the community better if health and social care teams are enabled to work together more closely.

“We have already created integrated teams working for both the Council and CCG. Service users who currently receive multiple care packages will benefit greatly from this new joint way of working ad Southend-on-Sea is proud to be the first area in the country to pioneer this way of working.”

Carol Cranfield, Principal Social Worker and Caldicott Guardian at Southend Council said: “We all strive to provide the highest standards of care, but I know how much better it would be if our social workers could share information with an individual’s GP. We could plan care jointly and deliver a single package of care rather than delivering multiple health and social care services separately.

“More than 4,000 social care clients in Southend have already agreed for us to link the social care record that we hold with the health record held by their GP.
This is great progress and we are confident the end result will be a much better service which will benefit the people of Southend.”

In order to gain permission from the Secretary of State for Health to share data in this way, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council and NHS Southend Clinical Commissioning Group worked closely with the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG). This is an independent advisory body which includes GPs, consultants, clinicians and health professionals. Its role is to take a strong and challenging ethics position during the application process for data sharing and to ensure any agreed data sharing is consistent with legislation.

Earlier in the year, following a lengthy and detailed application process, the CAG was satisfied the Council and CCG had met all of its conditions and only after that did the Secretary of State for Health give Southend permission to take this project forward. Southend is the first area in the country to gain this permission.

Dr José Garcia Lobera, chair of NHS Southend Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “There are many initiatives within the public sector which are specifically about saving money. This scheme is not one of them. Indeed, there may be occasions when, through integrated working, we identify that a patient has additional needs not currently being met and this could actually increase the cost of their care.”