Transforming Your Care round table event

John Compton, Chief Executive of the Health and Social Care Board and Chair of the Review Team, delivered a presentation that provided an overview of the proposals within Transforming Your Care with particular reference to the role of the voluntary and community sector.

He explained that the aim of TYC is to improve health and wellbeing by promoting good health decisions and preventing ill health in the first place. He went on to say that achieving better outcomes when ill health does occur and enabling people to live independently for as long as possible is another major area of work under TYC. However, he did comment that in order to realise these goals there would need to be a 5% shift from acute care to community care over the next five years.

Other desired outcomes through TYC include:

• Providing individuals with more choice about the services they receive and where they receive them;
• Aiming to be being at the forefront of new technology to help individuals to care for themselves whilst making the best use of the resources;
• More collaborative working with different sectors including the voluntary and community sector.

As part of the event, a panel discussion also took place with representatives from Age NI, Carers NI, MacMillan Cancer Support, MENCAP and NIAMH providing responses to John Compton’s comments, whilst setting out their initial views of proposals within the consultation document and what the potential impacts would mean to the individuals that they represented.

Feedback from event participants on TYC was generally positive and most believed, handled correctly, it could be beneficial to all. However concern was raised that transfer of services should not take place until a properly constructed alternative was established. Further considerations were also raised from the discussions that took place, including:

• How the voluntary and community sector is more responsive to the change because it is constantly looking for ways to improve service. It was felt that clinicians can be more resistant to change because they sometimes don’t see the bigger picture.
• That it would be beneficial for the voluntary and community sector to meet with clinicians, with the suggestion that joint training in service delivery would be a possibility.
• TYC is viewed positively because it provides more opportunities to collaborate and more opportunities to communicate with different services to ensure there is no duplication. This should hopefully lead to a better use of funding too.
• Also discussed was the potential problem of competitiveness between the service providers and how organisations may feel threated because of potential loss of funding etc.
• Participants commented how they were keen to see that more resources met the needs of more people and that a high quality of service was provided - not just the cheapest alternative.

Please see below to access the PowerPoint presentation delivered by John Compton.