Making it happen in Furness and South Lakes

In August 2004, Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust and Cumbria Social Services (now the Adult Social Care service within the Adult and Cultural Services directorate) appointed 2 part-time integrated care facilitators for the South Lakes and Furness areas. The roles involved implementing the changes needed for staff to work in a collaborative manner. The role specification included:

• to embrace and support integrated working and the single assessment process;
• to take a lead in the training of health and social work professionals to support them working as an integrated team;
• to develop local service policies and pathways to enable health and social care staff to access a range of each other’s services; and
• to assess staff competencies and abilities to commission each other’s services.

Overall direction for the project was provided by the Joint Management Team, (which consists of senior management from the Adult Social Care, Morecambe Bay PCT and managers from Morecambe Bay Hospital Trust) and the ‘Making it Happen’ document.

Groups of staff, including district nurses, social workers and community staff nurses for the elderly, were aligned around clusters of GP practices.

Training was delivered to these aligned team areas, using material adapted from the St Martin’s College ‘Resource Pack to Support Integrated Care Team Development’.  The training was delivered over a period of three workshops for each team, and locality meetings to discuss topics of shared interest and joint working.