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Transforming health and social care services for a healthier Wales
A Healthier Wales – Context
A Healthier Wales is the Welsh Government’s long-term plan for health and social care. It sets out a future vision for integrated health and social care services in Wales, supported by 40 priority actions for the first three years of the plan. It was well received by all stakeholders when it was published in June 2018. Since then, Welsh Government’s Transformation Programme has been established to progress these 40 actions, working jointly with key partners across health and social care in Wales.
Following publication of the plan, Wales has seen a substantial shift in how partners work together and changes in the partnership landscape. This has been led by the Regional Partnership Boards (RPBs) bringing together regional stakeholders in health and social care. The Covid public health emergency has had a significant impact on the programme overall, with partners refocusing resources on the Covid response. We are working with partners to support the response.
Transformation Engagement
Significant engagement has taken place to support the transformation agenda, including Team Wales and Health and Social Care Leadership Group events held across the country. These events bring together leaders from across Health and Social Care.
14 workforce engagement events were undertaken between September 2019 and January 2020 with 659 NHS, social services and third sector representatives attending. The events promoted understanding of our Prudent Healthcare philosophy, our Quadruple Aim approach, and the Design Principles through a workforce engagement programme. In February 2020, the Minister and Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services hosted a learning event for the Regional Partnership Boards. The event provided an opportunity to collectively share learning since the launch of A Healthier Wales and look forward to the challenges ahead. During the event, RPBs discussed how they have developed, how work has progressed around engagement and partnerships, and future funding arrangements after the Integrated Care Fund and Transformation Fund come to an end.
Transformation Fund – Supported Projects
The Transformation Fund is driving transformational change with a focus on stronger partnership working. It is targeted to priority projects and to new models of health and social care, with the aim of speeding up their development and demonstrating their value. Initially these
will be models which make early progress on seamless alignment of health and social care services; local primary and community-based health and social care delivery; and new integrated prevention services and activities.
£89 million of funding is now supporting 14 projects across Wales. Significant progress has been made in many of these projects, and Welsh Government are continuing to work closely with regional teams to evaluate, monitor progress and offer active management support.
Welsh Government have hosted regular, well-attended learning network workshops where regional transformation teams and project leads can discuss progress, lessons learned and examples of good practice emerging from projects.
Prior to Covid, regional transformation was gathering significant momentum. Currently, several of the projects scaled with support from the fund are instrumental in the regional Covid response. This includes rapid discharge/ hospital-to-home projects, but also admission avoidance/ stay-well-at-home services, efforts to strengthen digital community assets, and community mental health support for the most vulnerable citizens.
In recognition of the impact of the Covid pandemic on transformation projects, a 12 month extension of the Transformation Fund and Transformation Programme and an additional year’s funding were announced in August 2020.
Fund Evaluation
Regional teams have completed Theories of Change for their projects, and a National Evaluation Framework for the Transformation Fund was agreed with Regional Partnership Boards in April 2019. This will help us to understand what works, in a comprehensive and consistent way, across Wales. Regional teams submitted their first mid-point evaluation reports earlier this year to provide early findings on the progress of transformation projects. A national mid-point evaluation report was published in August 2020.
In order to help with the ‘spread and scale’ of best practice, Communities of Practice are currently taking place in relation to the main transformation themes of place based care; hospital to home services; technology enabled care and emotional and mental health.
