David Amess – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Amess on 2015-10-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress NHS England has made on making care for people with long-term conditions (a) more personalised and (b) better coordinated in the last year.

Jane Ellison

NHS England’s Five Year Forward View sets out a number of high level objectives that will support better long term condition (LTC) care. Delivery of these objectives is being supported in a number of ways across NHS England and with partners. These include improving professional and public awareness of person centred co-ordinated care and supporting commissioners through the development of a LTCs commissioning toolkit, a LTC dashboard and personalised care and support planning handbooks.

In January 2015 NHS England and the Coalition for Collaborative Care published the personalised care and support planning handbooks which were coproduced with representatives from commissioning organisations, care practitioners, patients, carers and policy experts. The handbooks provide practical information and theory on how to introduce personalised care and support planning and encourage reflection and innovation for local approaches to implementation and include supplementary information for commissioners, advice on practical delivery and effective multi-disciplinary working. The Integrated Personal Commissioning Programme, a joint NHS England and Local Authority led programme, began in April 2015 and aims to better coordinate an individual’s health and social care funding, giving them more control over how this money is used through person-centred care planning and personal budgets.

NHS England is taking steps to roll out personal health budgets which will offer people with LTCs more choice and control over the care and support they receive.