In a recent visit, Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive Officer of NHS Confederation, said he was so impressed by the level of integration, collaboration and commitment shown by the partnership and described the work being done as “absolutely brilliant”.

Demonstrating strong working relationships, senior representatives from the NHS, Council and housing described the journey so far, including the development of a new model of care, integrated teams, significant reductions in lengths of stay in hospital and admissions through the implementation of the care navigation centre, integrated assessment hub and virtual wards and the development of a new wellbeing outcomes framework. In addition to this housing also highlighted a number of projects including work4health scheme, Kindness Counts and Diabetes Champions all aimed at reducing health inequalities and building resilience within local communities.

In a series of tweets, Matthew Taylor described the visit as ‘inspiring’ and said his takeaways from the day were:

  • Effective care coordination between health and care partners makes a difference, reducing hospital conveyance, directing people to the right services first time, generating data to improve care for individuals and communities. Takes time and goodwill but results are impressive
  • We need to build on the progress made in coordination before and during last winter as we meet need now and prepare for next winter (in a service which is facing huge demand with highly constrained budgets)
  • Place based working built on a shared vision and strong relationships between agencies and people can lead to improvement, innovation and open up the possibilities for new models of care
  • Working at place can also enable new partnerships focussing on tackling the social determinants of health. For example, I heard about some inspiring work with Walsall’s main social housing provider
  • Place partners are also clear: they needed time & resources to develop relationships, a locally determined approach to governance, with flexibility to take a bottom-up, ‘Community Champions’ development approach, rooted in local engagement
  • At the same time, it was concerning to hear that partners in health and local government face an incredibly tough financial situation including deep cuts to ICB capacity, which undermine the ability of systems to incentivise and support effective place working

Michelle McManus, Director of Transformation and Place Development, for Walsall Together said: “It was such a privilege to showcase even just a snippet of all the fantastic work the partnership does. I have no doubt in my mind that our success to date is down to the culture, shared vision and strong working relationships that enable our ability to reflect and respond to local need in our communities. The passionate people around the table, both statutory and VCSE, who with the best interests of the citizens of Walsall in their hearts, find innovative ways of reducing health inequalities and improving outcomes. I think I can speak on behalf of the partnership that it was a real honour to receive such praise from Matthew and we look forward to working with him and NHS confederation to develop even further and share our learning with other place-based partnerships.”