The ICS Working Group exists to lead HPIG’s work around the newly created Integrated Care Systems and the corresponding Integrated Care Partnerships and Integrated Care Boards.
The ICS Working Group looks to offer its support to ICSs around the particular health needs of babies, children and young people, as well as assess how well ICSs have been able to meet their legal requirement in this area.
The Working Group has met with ICSs, NHSE and DHSC officials in relation to this area.
Support for and Assessing of Strategies and Plans
The focus of the Working Group currently is to undertake an analysis of every Integrated Care Partnership Strategy and Integrated Care Board 5-Year Joint Forward Plan using the following set of criteria.
Key criteria for assessing strategies and plans:
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Population health - whether children and young people have been recognised as an entire population health group, from conception to 25.
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Leadership - whether an Executive Lead for Children and Young People has been appointed; whether there is clarity about leadership for children’s mental health, SEND and safeguarding (other statutory roles).
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Co-production – whether there is evidence of the extent and quality of the engagement with children, young people and families, and how this has informed decisions.
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Workforce - whether there is a clear approach to building and strengthening the children’s workforce in its widest sense.
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Information and data – whether there is evidence of joined up use of multi-agency data to drive planning, prioritisation and commissioning.
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Integration – whether there is evidence of engagement with a full range of statutory agencies with responsibility of children and young people; if plans articulate a joint approach with other key services, notably local authority children’s services, SEND, and early education, schools and colleges, as well as an approach to integration across NHS services, such as community, GP and hospital services.
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Inequalities - the extent to which health inequalities amongst different groups of children and young people are recognised and steps identified to address those inequalities; whether the role of Cor20Plus5 for children and young people is referenced
As part of this process we have attempted to reach out to every ICS and in particular their ICB Executive Lead for Children. We would like them to know about our work and offer our support in providing evidence and insight for their plans, celebrate areas that are going well and share insights and good practice across the sector.
Please find our letter outlining our work and offer of support below.
Data and Information
A further area that the ICS Working Group is focused on is data and information. The Health and Care Act acknowledged the serious challenges with sharing relevant information about children. It equally recognised the potential benefits of a single consistent identifier that would bring together disparate records about an individual child.
To address this, an amendment was made to the Act that required the government to lay a report before Parliament within a year setting out:
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The Government’s policy on a consistent identifier for children and its approach to improving information sharing more generally;
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How this can be achieved across health, children’s social care, police, and education settings; and
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The cross-government actions that will be taken to implement the policy set out in the report.
The ICS Working Group is working with the Department for Education, Department for Health and Social Care and other departments to support this report.