About St Helens Cares
St Helens Cares is an integrated health and care system for the people of St Helens.
Everyone who works within St Helens Cares aims to achieve the same vision;
“To improve people’s lives in St Helens, together, by tackling the challenge of cost and demand”
St Helens Cares was launched in 2018 to address the rising cost and demand in health and social care, and is an integrated, local health and social care system for all ages.
Made up of a wide number of public sector providers, St Helens Cares will, over time, become jointly responsible for the quality and cost of services and support for local people, working together within agreed budgets to meet the needs of local people with a great emphasis on preventing the need for health and social care by supporting people to remain independent for as long as possible.
The St Helens model is unique as it is much broader than just health and social care, it also includes services and support such as housing, education and arts and culture. St Helens Cares is taking an integrated approach in supporting local people to live well.
The Care Conundrum
St Helens Cares was established to make the entire health and care system simpler for people to enter and navigate, and support people to keep themselves healthy. Health and care services have previously been fragmented and complex with many different providers offering services and support. There are also different laws governing different parts of the system, for example, health care is free at the point of delivery whereas social care is means tested. There are also are some areas of duplication and inefficiency, together with the challenge of demographic growth and reducing budgets across organisations in the place.
The diagram below shows the problem that St Helens Cares is trying to solve;
The Scope of St Helens Cares
St Helens People’s Board
The purpose of a Health and Wellbeing Strategy is to improve the health and wellbeing of the local community and reduce inequalities for all ages. They are not an end in themselves, but a continuous process of strategic assessment and planning – the core aim being to develop local evidence-based priorities for commissioning which will improve the public’s health and reduce inequalities.
To address the joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy locally more efficiently, the St Helens People’s Board has been created, combining the statutory functions of both the Health and Wellbeing Board and the Community Safety Partnership.
The vision and purpose of the St Helens People’s Board is;
“Improving Lives for People in St Helens, together, by tackling the challenge of cost and demand”.
The People’s Board will work towards the following strategic objectives;
- Raising and achieving aspirations
- Developing a sustainable Health and Social Care system
- Growing the Economy
- Being Connected
The St Helens People’s Board aims to be;
“the most effective borough-based partnership in the country with enhanced stewardship by those who are democratically elected”
For more information about St Helens People’s Board, please visit http://moderngov.sthelens.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=495
The St Helens Cares model acknowledges that in order to achieve sustained improvement in population outcomes whilst achieving system financial balance, significant change is required in the relationship between system partners to create a place-based health, care and community model, and between services and citizens to foster a culture of independence, resilience and self-care.
In this context, St Helens Cares will bring together all local service providers, who will become jointly responsible for the quality and cost of care for local people, working together within agreed budgets. St Helens Cares is a leading example of “place based” working, under which organisational boundaries will be broken down and partners will work together to meet the needs of people in St Helens.
Municipal Journal (MJ) Award
St Helens Cares was the winner of the 2018 MJ Award for Care and Health Integration.
In April 2018, St Helens Cares was awarded the MJ Award for health and social care integration. The award recognised St Helens’ unique, innovative, place based approach to addressing challenges of cost and demand. It was acknowledged how St Helens Cares had demonstrated more efficient use of resources, despite no new money or transformation funding. Most importantly, the award panel had been sent a number of testimonies from people that had used services and support from St Helens Cares, which acknowledged the progress that had been made in providing improved health and social care.
This is what people had to say about St Helens Cares;
“Everything and the people who have been excellent. The whole service has been absolutely wonderful”
“Great service – made an improvement in my mobility”
“Very good service”
“Reablement service were extremely helpful. Nothing too much once we were home”
“I think you deliver an EXCELLENT service, so I hope you feel very proud about that”
“We would like to say a very big thanks. Since my mum returned home you guys have been fantastic and the care you have shown has been brilliant”.
St Helens Cares Programme
St Helens Cares was initially resourced by a multi-agency design and delivery team, who designed the initial priority projects and supported people to make the change from their individual organisational provision to a more integrated offer.
The original programme is shown by the picture below;
The St Helens Cares Programme was developed around four key themes;
Early intervention and prevention,
Front door (Contact Cares)
Care management and co-ordination
Urgent and crisis care.
Each of these key themes are supported by a number of enabling workstreams; business intelligence, governance, communications and engagement, information technology, estates, workforce, finance, information governance and programme management.