18th November
Work has progressed significantly to establish the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Alliance, which is now being formally embedded within the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System (ICS), and has been identified as one of the ways of supporting more collaborative working within the region. More information on the ICS is available here. Through the ICS, our ambition is to continue to make a real difference to our citizens’ health and wellbeing, quality of service delivery and use of resources, and we recognise that the VCSE sector will be key to this success.
The purpose of the VCSE Alliance is to enable every citizen to enjoy their best possible health and wellbeing by bringing together local representatives of national and regional VCSE organisations as a single point of contact, to generate citizen intelligence from the groups and communities that they work with. This vital insight is then going to be shared across the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS and Integrated Care Board, to ensure that the experiences and views of our citizens are considered in the design and delivery of health and social care services in the region, and to enable an effective two-way flow of information.
As part of the development of the new VCSE Alliance, we will shortly be recruiting for a Chair. One of the key responsibilities for this role will be to support our “citizen first” approach, ensuring that the intelligence and insight from people and communities are collated and shared effectively. Written strongly within the ‘Vision and Values’ for the group, is the need to amplify the voices of those communities who don’t always engage with health and care services. To support this, a ‘framework’ is being developed which will outline how the citizens intelligence will be collated - utilising the experience of the Chair and Alliance members to engage with these communities - and how the outputs for patients will be measured. The framework will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Alliance.
All Nottingham and Nottinghamshire VCSE organisations are welcome to join the Alliance, and all members - from the largest to the smallest voluntary organisations – will act as equal partners within it. The next meeting takes place on Tuesday 6th December, 2 – 4pm via Teams. Membership consists of CEOs from a wide range of VCSE organisations. If you are interested in joining please contact Prema Nirgude, Head of Insights and Engagement, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB, prema.nirgude@nhs.net 079200 81599
ICS Partners Assembly
On 25 October, the first ICS Partners Assembly was held in Mansfield and brought people together from across the Notts system including NHS, local authority, VCSE organisations, citizens and patients. The Chair and Vice Chairs of our ICS spoke about our journey so far, the enduring challenges faced by our citizens, the urgent need to address these and the opportunities that the development of our Integrated Care Strategy will bring. There were keynote presentations from Professor Daniel King from Nottingham Trent University and Jules Sebelin from Nottingham CVS who looked at the impact of the VCSE sector, lessons learned from the pandemic and integration from the perspective of the sector.
More information about the event can be found here: Plans and priorities - NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS - NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS (healthandcarenotts.co.uk)
Integrated Care Strategy
There are still opportunities to feed into the development of the Strategy via a survey: Developing our Integrated Care Strategy - what's important to you? (office.com)