Cumberland Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2023 to 2028

Why is it important?

Cumberland’s Health and Wellbeing Board agree that a focus on health and wellbeing needs to be more holistic than looking at preventing ill health separately from health and care services. 

Like the rest of the country, there has been an unprecedented increase in the demand for health and social care services. Cumberland shares a common national aspiration to allow people right across our area to live in the best mental and physical health possible for as long as possible, not to primarily achieve sustainability and save money but because it’s the right thing to do. 

It is recognised that to achieve change more services should be available closer to home and in the community. This will help to reduce the number of people entering acute provision and ensure people can access the right service in the right place at the right time – making services easier to access and navigate. Integrated Care Communities are providing the building blocks for this to happen at a local level.

Providing person-centred care to people and families in our area also requires services and teams to think differently, perhaps working more flexibly or in a joined up way to identify and deal with problems as far ‘downstream’ as possible. Carrying out this change in the context of wider integration work through Integrated Care Partnerships also provides the opportunity for service redesign to fully embrace community assets. This includes people and patients themselves. People who are empowered and activated, living in thriving communities are more likely to self-care and maintain independence for longer. Delivering successful health and care integration also means looking beyond healthcare to ensure that we are supporting local economies and places. 

The pressures being experienced in some areas with access to GP services and dentistry in particular are recognised as significant issues facing some of communities and there is an acknowledgement that partners need to work together to find solutions to these issues. 
There needs to be a focus on working across the public sector to maximise the impact of the workforce on the people served across Cumberland. Instead of being a group of organisations, health and care needs to be seen as a collective of professionals, volunteers and residents who come together with the health and wellbeing of all Cumberland people as a common concern and interest. The people who need to be involved aren’t necessarily health and care providers, they may be from the third sector, or other teams, such as the Fire and Rescue Service. They may be friends, family, and neighbours.

This will support the principle of prevention and early intervention which is integral to delivering successful services right across Cumberland that reduces health inequalities, including rural inequalities.

Priority areas

• Developing integrated approaches to health, social care and prevention services
• Providing fair and equitable services 
• Developing place-based approaches to wellbeing including enhancing community based support options
• Ensuring mental health and learning disability services are fit for purpose 
• Supporting independent living and empowering patients to take responsibility for their own health and self-management of their conditions. 
• Embedding a population health approach in all health and social care. 

What sort of things are we going to do?

• Further development of Integrated Care Communities (ICCs);
• Develop a population health approach as part of the Workington Health and Care Integration pilot
• Supporting the voluntary and community sector to be able to provide sustainable community based care and support options
• Integration of reablement and rehabilitation services
• Work to establish stronger partnerships between Social Care providers
• Develop joint programmes to attract and support health and social care staff
• Work across sectors to more effectively commission jointly funded packages of care for children and young people with complex support needs across education, social care and health care
• Focus on addressing the challenges in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision
• Recommission the GP and Pharmacy Outcomes Framework
• Use data warehousing systems to make data driven decisions in relation to managing risk, targeting resources and early intervention
• Utilise artificial intelligence to help our workforce make ‘every decision’ and ‘every contact’ count
• Developing joined up approaches to end of life care

How are we going to measure progress?

• Number of avoided hospital admissions per annum;
• Number of reduced bed days per annum;
• Rate of people receiving social care packages.
• Rate of admissions to residential and nursing care homes.
• Number of new Social Prescribing programs implemented
• User and carer experience and quality of life;
• Number of families accessing Early Help
• Access to mental health services
• Proportion of people with Learning Disabilities receiving their annual health check;
• Self-reporting confidence in maintaining independent living/management of condition