iBCF Social Prescribing and Voluntary Community Sector Support & Development Service

Social Prescribing:

The Improved Better Care Fund (iBCF) is a programme spanning both the NHS and local government which seeks to join-up health and care services, so that people can manage and co-produce a programme to help improve their own health and wellbeing, and live with greater independence within their communities for as long as possible. The iBCF has been created to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, placing them at the centre of their care and support, and providing them integrated health and social care services, resulting in a more personalised and improved experience leading to a better quality of life. An important aspect of this is help and support to navigate the transfer of care, from hospital to home, or between any other parts of the system. Services and processes require further understanding and integration to better manage and reduce delays; minimise deterioration, and promote recovery and independence. Preventative approaches such as Social Prescribing incorporating asset based approaches in communities have the potential to reduce; admissions or length of stay, and speed up the transfer of care by utilising available community assets; or building them where necessary, as a catalyst for improving self-care.

The Healthy London Partnership (2017) explains that a social prescribing service as part of this integrated care can support and empower people to improve self-care, social prescribing is where the NHS meets the community and its assets, it builds on the experiences of implementing personalisation models of care advocated by disabled people and is most successful when NHS, Local Authority, GP and primary care and voluntary and community sectors all work together.

Voluntary & Community Sector Support and Development Service:

Following a review of the support funded by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and provided to the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in the East Riding, the Council seeks to commission a new service on expiry of the current contract.
The Service will support and develop the local VCS to take a strategic approach to its sustainability by addressing its development needs and building its capacity to measure and demonstrate its value, enabling it to be an effective partner in improving the health and wellbeing of local residents and to:

• collaborate in the delivery of the Council’s corporate priorities of ‘Supporting Vulnerable People, Reducing Inequalities’ and ‘Promoting Health Wellbeing and Independence’
• work seamlessly together to deliver the improved Better Care Fund (iBCF) priority of achieving more integrated services which help to improve the health, wellbeing and care of residents of the East Riding of Yorkshire
• make more efficient use of available resources, working smarter to increase the sector’s sustainability and to support delivery of the Public Health outcomes of influencing the wider determinants of health and reducing health inequalities.
• Ensue the sustainability and develop the capacity of the sector.