Keeping Sheffield people well

Town Hall fountain view

The city’s shared aspiration is to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequalities for Sheffield people.

Sheffield City Council and Sheffield’s Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has shared health care commissioning arrangements in place and delivers a range of programmes through the Better Care Fund (BCF) to help people stay out of hospital and to support them to recover quickly if they do need to be admitted. These include People Keeping Well, Active Support and Recovery, Ongoing Care and Mental Health Programmes.

These joint commissioning commitments focus on integrating services to improve the people’s experience, to remove duplication in services and to design the health and social care system to reduce reliance on long term care by focusing on prevention and early intervention.

We recognise there is more to do to continue to improve services and on 20 March, the council’s cabinet will be asked to agree to formally establish a joint committee that will bring together the commissioning responsibilities of the Council and the CCG and focus our efforts on areas where we know we need to make improvements.

Initially our focus will be on continuing the integration of commissioning mental health services, where we have an already established programme; focusing on the support for those with special educational needs, and our services around frailty, both of which are areas we know we need to make improvements.

If approved, the city will see improved joint commissioning which will focus on preventing, care closer to people’s homes or neighbourhoods or home via neighbourhood, localities hubs, reduced health inequalities, health care that focuses on the individual and effective and efficient use of resources whilst providing safe standards of service.

As well as this new approach, the Sheffield Accountable Care Partnership (ACP) ‘Sharing Sheffield’ plan will be updated to deliver tangible improvements across the board for people’s health locally, including staff and those who face inequality. It also takes into account the need to ensure the sustainability of the city’s economy.

Councillor Chris Peace, Cabinet member for health and social care said: “We’ve made a lot of progress by working together to commission and deliver services and we know that this is already having an impact across the city. We are doing this against a backdrop of reduced funding and increased demand for our services but we are committed to making more improvements and more quickly. The health of Sheffield people is so important and it’s therefore essential that we get this right.”