Agenda item

This item from the Hammersmith & Fulham Health and Care Partnership presents their overarching partnership plan for 2025-26.

Caroline Farrar (Hammersmith & Fulham Health and Care Partnership Managing Director) presented the item on their overarching partnership plan for 2025-26. She noted that she had only been in the role from 1 July 2024 and they were still in the early stages of developing the refreshed partnership plan.

Caroline Farrar discussed some of the key insights from the Shared Needs Assessment:

• H&F had the lowest 3-year life expectancy at birth for 2020-22 in North West London, and the second lowest when looking at the one-year trend.
• 18% of the population was in the Core 20 most deprived areas, compared with 12.7% in North West London.
• There were pockets of deprivation across the borough, particularly White City and Wormholt in the north.

Caroline Farrar explained that the Partnership was complex, with multiple NHS organisations serving the borough, including two major hospital trusts, two community trusts, a mental health trust, five community health providers, and a thriving voluntary sector. She said there were a lot of high-quality providers, but the overall system was fragmented and there was a lack of continuity. She also highlighted significant inequalities in the borough and a distrust of the NHS in some communities.

Caroline Farrar said when she came into the role she spoke with many frontline staff and the public they served. They discussed what was working well and not so well and what they wanted to achieve together. The Partnership was still working on priorities and workstreams. She said it was important to focus on a small number of high priority areas and build trust. She noted their work would be guided by the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. One of the key aims was joining up services.

Caroline Farrar also noted they wanted a better understanding of neighbourhood health and for care to be more personalised. She said this was more important as the population grows and ages. The older population was expected to increase by 36% in the next nine years and that required better prevention, self-care, and joined-up working.

Councillor Helen Rowbottom asked what the timeline was for Integrated Neighbourhood Teams. Caroline Farrar said it was still at an early stage, but they wanted to be having an impact by next winter.

Councillor Rowbottom noted that a joint objective was to use the Whole Systems Integrated Care (WSIC) dataset for upstream intervention. She asked how that could be achieved at pace. Caroline Farrar said good building blocks were already in place, with two of the Primary Care Networks have ‘connecting care for children’, a joint clinic between paediatrician and GP with an multi-disciplinary team meeting afterwards which reviews the cases and enables professionals to bring forward other issues. She felt this was an example of an Integrated Neighbourhood Team approach already working well and the goal was to build on these types of arrangements. She added that the WISIC dataset was valuable and noted Dr Nicola Lang was keen to utilise it more effectively. She said they had the right support at leadership levels to be more ambitious and inject more pace.

Dr James Cavanagh explained that the WSIC database dated back 15 years to an initiative in North West London, designed to improve information sharing and better understand patient needs. He said the goal of the Integrated Neighbourhood Team approach was using that data to understand the health needs in an area, what was needed to meet those needs, and deliver the outcomes the community wanted.

The Chair thanked members of the Board for their contributions.

RESOLVED

1. The report and presentation on the Overarching Partnership Plan was noted.