The theme of working together for improved services crops up more than once in this the latest report from the PEC committee meeting with the management team of NHS Wandsworth. This is personal feedback from our PECMAN Andrew Craig in his role as the Lay Member on the PEC (Professional Executive Committee).

Better Integration = More Effective Commissioning

The discussion on how best to provide the services needed by drug and alcohol users identified the important point that ‘drug and alcohol services should be considered together for commissioning purposes in close liaison with the local authority.’ Andrew added his own view saying:

“I welcomed the emphasis on better integration and more effective commissioning of these services. The Local Strategic Partnership should be the forum to address the wider non-health issues around drug and alcohol problems as it could involve more stakeholders including the police and courts service. Insight from service users was an essential part of the intelligence the PCT must obtain in order to improve its competencies in this area.”

The benefits of the PCT and Wandsworth Council working together came up again in a discussion about children’s service and how a joint initiative could be established using pooled funds from both local government and health care organisations.

Unprecedented Response – reliable basis for decisions

The South Wandsworth Consultation in which we as a LINk were very much involved had seen an unprecedented level of response from a good cross section of people in the borough.  This means that the information is a reliable basis for future decisions about the service.

In the light of this successful consultation, it is a shame that work going on to decide where future savings could be made did not involve frequent service users. Andrew makes the point that the PCT’s

“customer insight was inadequate to the scale of the decisions we needed to take and this had to be addressed through our engagement efforts. Service users and the general public had to be brought on board with the rationale for this thinking. If they were not, the risk was considerable that reasonable intiatives to achieve efficiency would be misunderstood and rejected by the very people who should be helping to identify them.”

Better Data, Lower Score but Better Service

NHS Wandsworth had collected better information on its drug services which showed things to be worse than had been previously thought and meant they got a lower score on some of the Government’s targets. However the better data means better provision since managers now have a better understanding of what the needs are and how they might be met. Congratulations to the NHS Wandsworth for risking the consequences of getting low marks on central government targets in favour of better local service in the long run.

To view the PEC October 2009 Report document in full, please visit our Health & Social Care page.