The UK government has published a White Paper setting out a blueprint to join up health and social care services as the key part of post-pandemic reform.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the White Paper, Integration and Innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all, will modernise the legal framework to make the system “fit for the future and put in place targeted improvements for the delivery of public health and social care”.
The White Paper includes a package of measures to deliver on specific needs in the social care sector.
The package, said DHSC, will improve oversight and accountability in the delivery of services through new assurance and data sharing measures in social care, update the legal framework to enable person-centred models of hospital discharge, and introduce improved powers for the Secretary of State to directly make payments to adult social care providers where required.
The measures will make integrated care the default, reduce legal bureaucracy, and better support social care, public health and the NHS, it added.
The reforms will “enable the health and care sector to use technology in a modern way, establishing it as a better platform to support staff and patient care, for example by improving the quality and availability of data across the health and care sector to enable systems to plan for the future care of their communities”.
“It will support local health and care systems to deliver higher quality care to their communities, in a way that is less legally bureaucratic, more accountable and more joined up, by bringing together the NHS, local government and partners together to tackle the needs of their communities as a whole,” DHSC added.
The legislation will fold Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority into NHS England, while maintaining the clinical and day to day operational independence of the NHS.
Corresponding reforms will ensure the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has the right levers to ensure accountability back to Parliament and taxpayers.
The White Paper sets out the government’s proposals for legislation, building on the extensive consultation that has already been undertaken by NHS England. A Bill will be laid before Parliament later in the year.
The government intends to bring forward separate proposals later this year on reforming the financing of adult social care.
“These changes will allow us to bottle the innovation and ingenuity of our brilliant staff during the pandemic, where progress was made despite the legal framework, rather than because of it,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured).
“The proposals build on what the NHS has called for and will become the foundations for a health and care system which is more integrated, more innovative and responsive, and more ready to respond to the challenges of tomorrow, from health inequalities to our ageing population.”
Care England, the largest representative body of independent adult social care providers, welcomed the publication of the White Paper as a step towards real integration between health and social care.
"The current situation where health and social care sit in distinct silos is not good for citizens, and is certainly not making the best of the resources available. We hope that these reforms will reshape the NHS and move us towards a system that is measured by the outcomes and which has a seamless interface between health and social care," said chief executive Martin Green.
"Care England would therefore like to engage with the development and implementation of the White Paper. For, if anything, the pandemic has demonstrated the need for the adult social care sector’s voice to be heard in the development of future health and care systems," he added.
