The Health Alliance group met online on the 14th of November to update the members on the progress made by the ICS and VCSE sector in working together to deliver the goals as set out in the VCSE Strategy.
The meeting was chaired by Kathryn Shepherdson, Deputy CEO of Hunts Forum; It was good to see another healthy representation from across the voluntary sector.
Kathryn opened the meeting by introducing Nicci Briggs, Chief Financial Officer at the Integrated Care Board (ICB), who came and spoke about her role and responsibilities and how funding is transferred across the sector.
Her Role & Responsibilities
Nicci is responsible for looking after the commissioning provision across the whole landscape and the different statutory responsibilities within the Integrated Care System (ICS) regarding the commissioning & performance of providers.
She looks after £1.7 billion system spending across the health allocation covering Mental Health, Acute Primary & VCSE sector. She sees her role as helping the ICS make decisions more quickly, offer more personalised care and remove existing barriers and boundaries that restrict care services around these critical areas:
- Primary Care
- Social Care Engagement
- Service Transfer
- End of Life/High Users
Over the next two years, her top priorities will focus on ‘Health & Equality’ within the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough region and identify more significant opportunities to address primary care issues.
Nicci explained how the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) sits alongside the ICB and is responsible for implementing the strategic direction for Social Care and Health. They also create the Health & Wellbeing Strategy and have input into key partnerships and coalitions with community partners such as the Better Care Fund (BCF) & Adult Care Discharge Fund.
Nicci explained that they are looking at a 6% growth in Care Services and see the NHS unpicking some of their larger funds to free up additional money to focus on localised care prevention and health & equality, mainly.
The ICB has created North & South Place partnerships that will work across our region and be responsible for delivering local care services and health & equality through Integrated Neighbourhoods Teams (INT), previously Primary Care Networks (PCN)
They are still in their infancy and not fully operational throughout the County, but they will eventually look at local issues and priorities for their patch and decide what actions need to be taken.
Nicci said that are three routes for the voluntary sector organisations to inform the ICB. Nicci recommended best routes to pass on information to the ICB are:
- Through the Integrated Neighbourhood teams (until the North and South Place partnerships are ready – they will feed back direct to PCN).Here is a link to access all the local INT/PCN https://cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk/health/healthcare/
- Forum – like the Health Alliance & other networks to gain direct access to key individuals within the ICB, like Nicci Briggs and Kit Connick, who have previously attended the Health Alliance meetings.
- Participate in the new voluntary sector forum the ICB is looking to launch to enable them to engage directly with the voluntary sector.
Data Collaboration Presentation
Michael Mitchel from the CAB then followed with his presentation exploring the idea of data collaboration between charities in Cambridgeshire. This was a piece of work commissioned from an earlier meeting. The CAB and Healthwatch agreed to collect data relating only to health and community care interaction.
Rachel Talbot and Michael asked for any feedback from Health Alliance members on what other data they might find useful.
The next meeting will be held on 11th January and a hybrid meeting (both online and face-to-face at The Maple Centre). If you would like an invite, please email debbie.drew@huntsforum.org.uk.
