I made this speech in main debate on the Policy & Resource Plan in relation to the priorities for Health and Social Care.
Sir, I’m not going to repeat all the aspects that relate to HSC in this plan but there are few over-arching comments I wish to make.
Firstly, as we showed during the SMC hearing 2 weeks ago, HSC is making transformation real. The Committee is making good progress against its 2018 priorities.
We have developed the client team enabling us to monitor the secondary health care contract which will develop as we build the foundations of the Partnership of pUrpose. We are increasing the capability and capacity of the Health Intelligence Unit to support our health needs assessments, with the first on older people currently in progress.
The Health Improvement Commission has been set up in shadow form and a SLA about to be put in place. We plan to identify the principal community hub by the end of the month with a move early in 2019.
Work is underway on improving the IT infrastructure with the LAN project having begun and initial work being undertaken on the upgrade of the Trak software. Both will be real enablers to true transformation.
Work to reprofile the PEH is actively underway and we expect an OBC by September. A policy letter setting out proposals for a new regulatory regime will be presented to the assembly by the end of the year and the autism hub is being developed.
Added t the above is joint working with ESS over funding of long term care as well as primary care and with P&R and ESS about future funding generally.
So real progress is being made. However, Committee is really concerned how the pressure on the budget, with the significant reduction for this year and potential for more than £1m to be cut for next year will impact on the work we can do. The impact of demand on the service earlier this year means a significant restriction on our ability to reinvest from the efficiencies we have made. IT means that we will need to apply to the transformation and transition fund to support our reablement project that will see improvements in community services and reduce the need for people to go to hospital and make it easier for them to return to the community when they do.
It is important that we maintain momentum because if we don’t it will only make the pressures we face worse. And we will only be able to maintain momentum with the support of other Committees.
And I suppose that is what disappoints me about this Plan. Whilst we have 23 priorities it really is still a group of plans that aren’t very joined up. Each Committee owns various policy priorities but each focuses on its favourites.
And we see that with the Partnership of Purpose.Not one Committee, apart from HSC obviously, has mentioned it as a priority heading in their introductions. P&R include 14 headings but not HSC transformation. Just ESS mentions it and that just in the body of the text.
This is a concern. If the officers haven’t thought about it when putting their respective Committee’s submissions together, will they think about prioritising it in their resource planning as per resolution o?
So, whilst I think the Plan has merits I do think greater thought is needed as we turn what is very much an academic exercise, 2 years into this term, into something that results in more joined up working.