Partnership Southwark

Partnership Southwark is here to focus on what we can achieve by working together across organisations (e.g. physical and mental health, social care, housing, voluntary sector). We recognise that we need to be led by the people of Southwark in designing, testing and developing genuinely joint solutions to address the deepest inequalities that we know exist in the Borough and to improve health for all – it’s about restoring humanity, caring and being bold and brave.

Dr Nancy Kuchemann & Cllr Evelyn Akoto, Partnership Southwark Co-Chairs

About the partnership

1. Partnership Southwark was formally established in 2019, building on exploratory work in 2017/18 for a Community Based Care Programme.
2. The Partnership Southwark Board has representatives from each of the partner organisations and meets bi-monthly.
3. We chose to strengthen partnership collaboration commitments in 2020/21 through a revised Memorandum of Understanding.

What has gone well

1. Providing the forum and opportunity for joint working and collaboration with community events over the summer.
2. Building stronger relationships and building system leadership, helped by the joint response to COVID-19 and coming together across the system to formally become an Integrated Care System.
3. Implementing COVID recovery priorities, including rolling out vaccination programme and the goals within System Recovery Plan.

Challenges experienced and overcome

1. The health and care landscape in Southwark is huge and complex. The population is diverse, which sometimes makes it difficult to focus resources on an individual’s needs and for people to access the right care and support.
2. Strong current focus on health where greater support could be assigned to social needs, including the social needs arising from inequalities.
3. Living with COVID and cost of living crisis has created new and emerging inequalities that require a new way of working within health and social care.

Results

1. Began developing a Lived Experience Assembly which will sit alongside the strategic board.
2. Population based ‘Wells’ workstreams (Start Well, Live Well, Age Well and Care Well) have been set up, with all partners working together to think about how to design, develop and deliver the best support possible for local people.
3. Recruited a multi-disciplinary team of Partnership Southwark leads, working in local frontline services, to provide expert guidance and help improve health and wellbeing outcomes for residents – this includes GPs, nurses, geriatricians, care home representatives and social prescribers.
4. Focus on developing as a system – Southwark has undertaken a 6 month place based development programme with NHSE/I and the LGA to prepare for their role in the ICS and will be continuing these sessions over the rest of the year.
5. Multi-disciplinary training through monthly Lunch and Learn sessions and a Experiential Leadership programme for interested leads within the borough.

What made the difference

1. We have built stronger relationships and ways of working together, and now we want to translate this into our next steps including neighbourhoods and coproduction; how we work and design support in a more local way.
2. We are developing a Health and Care Plan which will lay out priorities as Partnership Southwark and how we will deliver the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.