National Health Service

Baroness Redfern Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Redfern (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, for bringing this debate to the House. There are demands on our health service, and it is clear that a rapidly ageing society puts great pressure on our NHS in many different ways. My contribution to this debate will focus on local efforts to support these services.

As noble Lords will be aware, responsibility for public health now rests with local authorities, and that is working well. Councils now play a pivotal role in looking at what can be done to care for people in their own community. Integrated care is essential to meet the needs of the ageing population, to transform the way that care is provided for people with long-term conditions and to enable people with complex needs to live healthy, fulfilling and independent lives.

Locally we are delivering the better care fund programme to ensure a transformation in integrated health and social care. For example, in North Lincolnshire, we have joint senior management at clinical commissioning group and local authority level. We recognise that an enhanced out-of-hospital model, enabling health and social care professionals to provide more joined-up services closer to people’s homes and communities, should form the basis of any system-wide model of care. We connect local areas to local GP practices to offer new ways of working with social care, community healthcare, mental health services, voluntary and community organisations and other key stakeholders. We have local teams to enhance existing community services and have already delivered, as I have mentioned before in the House, five well-being hubs, which are fully operational, and are currently developing satellite hubs. These hubs target the most vulnerable people and provide interventions on a one-to-one basis. They actively work with hospital teams to create support links for service users admitted to hospital, helping with discharge. We are also looking at ways to work differently with the intermediate care services. We engage with users to make sure they have the confidence to access services and work, in order to reduce any delays in processing care which could damage that confidence. We are also piloting the healthy and active passport, which will give citizens access to services and schemes aimed at improving health and well-being.

We simply cannot ignore the impact of an ageing population and the pressures it puts on healthcare, both local and national. The current efforts to address projected pressures offer a way to a brighter future for older and vulnerable people, and I welcome the Government’s initiatives to support local areas. They are fundamentally about moving away from a sickness service and towards a system that enables people to live independent and healthy lives in their own communities. We must create wellness, not just treat illness. Through hard work, imagination, commitment, and not working in silos but together, we can meet head on the challenges presented by our increasingly elderly population and aspire to make this country the best to grow old in.