Dear Community Councillors,

 

As Chief Officer, I am pleased to present the second draft of the Strategic Plan and the A5 summary brochure for Health and Social Care Integration in the Borders.

It has been a hectic time, and we have done a significant amount of work to prepare for, and to develop, integrated health and social care services here in the Borders. This second draft is based on what we learned from listening to; service users, carers, members of the public, staff and partners, including third sector organisations.  

 

The new ninth objective, ‘We want to improve support for unpaid carers to keep them healthy and able to continue in their caring role’, has been added following the last round of consultation in May and June of this year. This reflects the way in which engagement with the people who use and provide our services is central to the development of our Strategic Plan. In the plan, we list the nine objectives, what we heard you say is important to you in connection to each objective, what we intend to do to meet the objective and the changes that you can expect to see. We know that the different localities have different needs, and we have also addressed this issue in this version of the plan.

 

Over November and the first two weeks in December, we will arrange a number of engagement activities for staff, partners and the general public to provide everyone the opportunity to come and talk to us about their views on the plan. We will visit all five localities to meet a cross section of the general public. All events will be supported by media activities such as press releases, social media and web up dates. It is important to get feedback from as many people as possible, as integration will affect everyone. 

 

The Strategic Plan will be finalised next year, and integration will go live in April 2016. I hope you can take the time to read this plan and reflect on what we are proposing to do in order to achieve our ambition of ‘Best Health, Best Care, Best Value’ for our communities.  On page 38 of this plan, we have included five consultation questions which we would appreciate your feedback on in order to develop the final draft of this plan. An online questionnaire is available on our website.

 

Susan Manion
Chief Officer, Health and Social Care  

 

 

 

"**********************************************************************
This email and any files transmitted with it are privileged, confidential and subject to copyright. Any unauthorised use or disclosure of any part of this email is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient please inform the sender immediately; you should then delete the email and remove any copies from your system.
The views or opinions expressed in this communication may not necessarily be those of Scottish Borders Council.
Please be advised that Scottish Borders Council's incoming and outgoing email is subject to regular monitoring and any email may require to be disclosed by the Council under the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 .  **********************************************************************"