Promoting partnership working to drive better experiences and outcomes for people

In the third of our regular COVID-19 insight reports, we again put the focus on collaboration between providers, in advance of our Provider Collaboration Reviews that are taking place throughout July and August.

Building on earlier conversations with stakeholders and reviews of local support plans, we report on how providers see the need and opportunity to tackle existing challenges and work together more across different pathways and services. The speed and scale of the response required by the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the benefits to services and the people who use them of creativity and innovation through collaborative approaches.

Responses to the pandemic have promoted partnership working to drive better experiences and outcomes for people using care services. From our previous work we know that a lack of collaboration between local services can be a significant barrier to people getting good care, and in this report we highlight the importance of:

• having a shared and agreed local vision
• securing shared governance arrangements to support timely decision-making
• joint approaches to having enough staff with the right skills to meet the needs of all people locally.

To help providers of health and social care services learn from the experience of responding to COVID-19 around the country, our rapid Provider Collaboration Reviews will focus on 11 Integrated Care System (ICS) or Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) areas. They will focus on the interface between health and adult social care for people aged 65 and over.

The reviews will support providers across systems by sharing learning, helping to drive improvements and prepare for future pressures on local health and care systems. These pressures include the financial impact of COVID-19 on adult social care services, which we have previously signalled through our Market Oversight scheme. Our analysis shows that care home admissions are substantially down from 2019 levels, although our registration data from March to June shows that any financial difficulties have not so far appeared to translate into significant amounts of reduced capacity. The financial impact on adult social care services is likely to continue and we continue to monitor the market carefully.

Supporting health and care - we need everyone’s feedback

We continue to place huge emphasis on hearing the experiences of both people who work in health and care services, and the people who use those services, their families, carers and loved ones. Our research shows that more than two-thirds of people are more likely to act to improve health and social care services since the outbreak of COVID-19, with close to two thirds saying they would be more willing since COVID-19 to support NHS and social care services by actively providing feedback on their care.

Because We All Care is a new campaign led by CQC and Healthwatch England. As the country pulls together to recover from the impact of coronavirus, Because We All Care aims to encourage more people to share their experiences of care to help the NHS and social care services identify and address quality issues and provide the best care possible.

Everyone can play a part in improving care by directly giving feedback to services, and by sharing information and experiences with us so that we can take action when we find poor care and highlight good care.

#BecauseWeAllCare about NHS and social care – share your feedback with @CareQualityComm