Health Alliance Group Update January 2023
On the 11th of January 2023, the Health Alliance group met again, face-to-face and online, via the hybrid facility at the Maple Centre. The meeting attracted a lot of new faces and was deemed a successful way to hold the meeting and will be adopted again later in the year.
Julie Farrow, CEO of Hunts Forum, chaired the meeting. She opened the meeting by introducing Graeme Hodgson, Adult Social Care Commissioning Manager at Cambridgeshire County Council, who came and delivered a presentation on Care Together: Happy at Home, which is a programme designed to offer support to older people to continue to live at home, with a good quality of life, for longer.
Graeme Hodgson, Care Together: Happy at Home
Care Together: Happy at Home
Graeme confirmed the launch of their new programme, Care Together, Happy at Home project. Care Together is looking to encourage local communities and partners to design and develop local services to enable the older and less able population to fulfil their wish to remain independent at home for as long as possible.
Graeme announced that Cambridgeshire County Council is keen to work with local partners, including micro-charities and social enterprise organisations, to deliver a locally ‘place-based’ solution to reach as many ‘vulnerable ‘people in the community who need the most help & assistance.
There are four ways for the VCSE to access the Care Together funding and work with the County Council to set up the best provision for delivering the care needed. These are:
- Enter a bid through the new ‘opt-lead provider’ model (currently in development)
- Apply for Seed funding for the expansion or creation of community assets supporting older people in the community. £275k funding monies will be split by locality across Fenland, East Cambs, South Cambs, Hunts & Cambridge City.
- Apply for Capital Investment Fund for physical infrastructure, adaptions, accessibility of community spaces etc.
- Apply for commission services via a new streamlined framework (currently in development)
Graeme explained that the Care Together project has been launched recently and he is actively looking to work closely with Health Alliance members to gain further insights from the volunteer sector. He is keen to identify the current ‘gaps’ in areas of poor delivery and encourage micro-providers to get more involved.
Graeme’s presentation on the launch of the Care Together programme can be accessed here.
Julie confirmed we have a good number of Representatives feeding back regularly from attending the various ICB boards and committees. Full details of these reports will be made available on the Health Alliance webpage in the next few weeks.
Finally, Julie gave a presentation updating the members on three projects funded by the ICB to help support the Health Alliance activities in developing the partnership. Some monies from the original 200k are still available. Julie requested that members utilise this opportunity to get more involved in each project and join one of the task groups to help the group allocate the remaining monies in the best way possible. These projects are:
- Tackling Inequalities – £30k of funding is still available. A data project was commissioned last month with CAB and Healthwatch to look at health data figures across our region. This data will be used to identify areas of inequality, but help is still needed to target specific areas.
- Partnership Development – £50k of funding is still available. Some of these monies will be assigned to the continued support of the admin & comms function and paying an allowance to all Representatives to cover their time. A training programme will be developed to offer confidence skills and encourage more members to become Representatives.
- Securing Funding and External Investment – £25k of funding is still available. Two consultancts have been identified to work with the task and finish group on a Fundraising Strategy, enabling VCSE organisations to work together and enter combined bids.
The next meeting will be held on 8th February and an online meeting between 9.30 am – 11.30 am. If you would like an invite, please email debbie.drew@huntsforum.org.uk.
