The Strategy Unit is embarking on an exciting project with WM ADASS, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care Services in the West Midlands to explore the challenges facing domiciliary care and the opportunities that exist to transform and improve the service.

The drive for greater integration of health and care services has been the central theme of UK health policy for most of the last decade.  There is near universal support for this objective, but little agreement on the best way it can be delivered. 

The UK is running its largest ever vaccination programme. The stakes are enormous. Ending lockdown, reopening schools and large parts of the economy, allowing social contact: so much depends on the NHS’ ability to deliver.

The Strategy Unit, the Health Economics Unit and Leicester Clinical Trials Unit have been announced as evaluation partners to support success in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Health and Care Awards.     

With the end of the New Care Models programme there is an opportunity to reflect on what has been learnt at local level. The Strategy Unit has worked closely with Dudley throughout its programme. So we were invited to present our reflections at Dudley’s recent conference. Our headline? Culture over contracts.  

In 2015, Dudley embarked on an ambitious journey to transform its health and social care services. Fundamentally, Dudley set out to provide more care outside of hospital settings and in local communities and GP practices.

The Strategy Unit has recently completed a £116,000 research project that will inform the development of new care models central to the NHS Five Year Forward View.  The project, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), aims to combine existing reported knowledge in an “evidence synthesis” of integrated models of care.  The team worked in partnership with the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, which has an international reputation in evidence synthesis and health services research.