There is a growing consensus around the benefits of a more holistic approach to health and care. The Five Year Forward View makes a strong case for moving away from a reliance on the purely medical model of health and care, towards a biopsychosocial model that focuses on the needs of the whole person, not just the condition.
The Six principles for engaging people and communities set out how local areas can work towards this holistic model, by developing truly person-centred, community-focused care. They show how engagement is important at every level, from the individual to the community level, and provide both a strategic vision and practical steps for achieving this.
Reflecting the findings of the Richmond Group’s recent paper Untapped Potential, and the final report of the VCSE review, the six principles underline the vital role of the voluntary sector in enabling this engagement and involvement. Indeed one of the principles focuses on the voluntary and community sector’s work in health and care; ‘Voluntary, community and social enterprise, and housing sectors are involved as key partners and enablers’.
But given the wide-ranging role of the voluntary sector, its work is threaded throughout the six principles. It helps with the delivery of person-centred care, with charities large and small organising peer support, providing personal budget brokerage and services, and working in partnership with primary care to deliver support through social prescribing.
The VCSE sector helps health and care services co-produce services, and it facilitates discussions with patients, carers and the public. It provides targeted, expert support for communities that experience particular health inequalities and those who find services inaccessible. The volunteering and social action it enables not only offers additional capacity to stretched services, but the associated health benefits for volunteers themselves can help ease demand.
Untapped Potential sets out what both the voluntary sector and health and care services can do to better work together to improve health and care. At NHS England, we recognise the importance of working in partnership with the voluntary sector, as exemplified through the Strategic Partners programme and the People and Communities Board itself, which brings together a cross section of charities to advise, support and challenge the Five Year Forward View programme.
The VCSE Review final report found that health and care voluntary services are operating in challenging financial circumstances. The report warns that both voluntary and statutory services will be at risk if voluntary and community organisations are seen as outsiders. At both national and local level, it is vital that health and care is seen as a partnership between the state and communities.