Health and social care is about providing care to people with physical, mental, emotional or social needs. It includes hospitals, community services and care at home and is aimed at helping individuals to stay as healthy as possible and enjoy life in their own communities.

When you have an eligible need, your local authority will prepare a support plan that meets those needs. It will look at what kind of health problem causes your eligible need, how it affects you day-to-day and whether there are any other issues affecting your ability to live as independently as you can. You should be involved in this process and your support should be tailored to meet your individual circumstances.

Integrating health and social care is a complex task that requires a combination of political will, financial investment, and critical enablers. Among other things, systems must establish clear accountability measures and invest in the technology required to facilitate the sharing of information between providers. Moreover, they must invest in the right kinds of training for staff to improve the quality of their care and develop the necessary skills.

One approach is to create a single, integrated care system that offers seamless access to both health and social care. This can be done by putting in place a case manager (typically a nurse or a social worker) who performs an initial assessment of a person’s eligibility for social care and then acts as the point of contact for all their different health and social care needs. health and social care