West Lothian Integration Joint Board consultation 2022

Modernising Adult Social Care - West Lothian Integration Joint Board

07 October

To access the IJB consultation please click here.

Background

The West Lothian Integration Joint Board (IJB) has responsibility for planning most health and social care services for adults in West Lothian.

The Board has eight voting members who are appointed by West Lothian Council and NHS Lothian, they are supported by a number of non-voting members including the Chief Officer, the Chief Social Work Officer, carer representative, service user representative, Third Sector representative, staffing representative and a range of professional advisors.

The Integration Joint Board's role is to set the strategic direction for functions delegated to it and to deliver the priorities set out in its current Strategic Plan. The IJB's vision is to increase wellbeing and reduce health inequalities across all communities in West Lothian.

The functions of the IJB include:

Primary Care
Adult Social Care
Mental Health Services
Learning Disability Services
Physical Disability Services
Community Health Services
Community Pharmacy Services
Health Improvement
Unscheduled Care for Adults
Housing Support/Aids and Adaptations

The IJB receives funding allocations from West Lothian Council and NHS Lothian to enable delivery of local priorities for health and social care for adults and has an annual budget of £262 million. The Board gives directions to the council and health board as to how they must carry out their business to secure delivery of the Strategic Plan.

The new IJB Strategic Plan

The IJB needs to develop a new Strategic Plan which will be in place from 2023- 2026 and will set out the future vision for health and social care in West Lothian.

The first step in developing the new plan has been the completion of a strategic needs assessment, which the IJB commissioned an independent consultant to undertake to ensure we have a good understanding of the needs of our population. We have looked at data and consulted a range of stakeholders to identify what is currently working well, what we still need to do and where any gaps exist.

As part of the strategic needs assessment we have engaged key stakeholders such as:

People who use our services
People who care for others
Staff who deliver health and social care services
Commissioned providers of health and social care
Members of the IJB's Strategic Planning Group
Other community representatives

As part of the strategic needs assessment our stakeholders have agreed that the following would be the priorities of the new strategic plan:

Improving Health Inequalities in Partnership	A "Home First" Approach	Enabling Good Care and Treatment
Focus on prevention and self-management Supporting people to make informed choices Working with communities in partnership with others to maximise impact Alignment with the Local Outcomes Improvement Plan and locality priorities Wider determinants	Investment in early intervention A human-rights based approach Self-management Care and treatment provided as close to home as possible Planned care rather than crisis care Specialist care in the right place	Supporting our workforce to deliver high quality care Improvement through transformation including digital transformation Support for unpaid carers Managing financial resources effectively through clear investment and disinvestment Sustainable service delivery

Challenges

The demographic and population projection data for West Lothian shows a population where older adults are increasing in number and will form a greater proportion of the population over time. The numbers of people in West Lothian aged 65 to 74 is expected to increase by 19% by 2028 with those aged over 75 increasing by 39%. This is compared to the Scottish average growth of 14.4% in the 65 to 74 population and 25.4% increase in those aged over 75 during the same time period.

The IJB has a total annual budget of £262 million to deliver key services. However, the IJB will in future receive less money from the council and health board and this combined with workforce pressures and increasing demand means that the IJB will need to change the way health and social care services are delivered.

Over the three-year period, from 2023/24 to 2025/26, it is expected that the IJB will have to make substantial savings as the funding available will be insufficient to meet the increasing cost of service delivery. Based on financial planning assumptions, a budget gap of £13.2 million is currently forecast over the three-year period for IJB services.

An initial range of proposals totaling £9.69 million have been identified for relevant social care and health services and the IJB is seeking the views of people in West Lothian on these proposals and associated changes to service delivery. Further work will be undertaken to identify further measures to address the remaining funding gap of £3.51 million.

The IJB will maximise the care services that can be provided from the funding it will have available. Your views on how we achieve this will be very important in shaping the future delivery of health and social care services in West Lothian. We ask that you: