Our partners
Working together to improve health and reduce health inequalities
Across North of Tyne we work with community partners, particularly local authorities, to optimise improvement we can make to local people’s health and reduce health inequalities.
We do this by working through a number of local mechanisms and partnerships including local strategic partnerships and making local area agreements on which areas of health improvement we will focus on. We also collaborate with partners on each local area’s ‘total place’ initiatives which take a cross-sector approach to achieving better outcomes for less resource and responding to the comprehensive area assessments (CAAs), which provide an independent assessment of outcomes achieved by local partnerships. For example, in Northumberland the CAA highlighted are hospital admissions for alcohol-related harm and stopping smoking rates as key issues that need to be addressed.
Local strategic partnerships, which bring together public sector bodies, such as the local authority and NHS, with the business sector, and community and voluntary organisations have a significant leadership role in their area to play an active part in joining up otherwise fragmented public services. They produce a sustainable community strategy (SCS) based on data and evidence from the local area and its population, to establish a shared local vision and priorities for action.
A local area agreement (LAA), based on the priorities identified in the area’s sustainable community strategy, is agreed with central government as a delivery plan for the SCS. LSPs review and performance manage progress against the priorities and targets agreed in the LAA and ensure delivery arrangements are in place.
Assessing health needs in Northumberland
A joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA) is how primary care organisations and local authorities describe the future health and wellbeing needs of local populations and how we can direct our services and resources to meet those needs.
The JSNA must pull together a wide range of information about the current and future health and well-being needs of the local population.
It provides an opportunity to look forward so that we can plan now to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of local communities in the future.
The JSNA is a major influence in directing our commissioning priorities and planning service developments.
The assessment describes the future health, social care and well-being needs of the population so that NHS North of Tyne and Northumberland County Council can take co-ordinated action to make improvements.
The primary aim of JSNA is to describe the health and well-being needs of the population of Northumberland.
We have focused on refining, improving and bringing together the information we have available that provides an insight into the overall needs of the population. This information is from national and local sources and includes extensive information we have collected directly from services across Northumberland.
Initial work, carried out in 2008/09 has been used to take a longer-term view of population trends and the likely impact on demand for support over the next years and decades.
Alongside this quantitative information, we have looked at the commissioning knowledge we already have in order to identify what these figures and trends mean for services locally and to highlight priority areas for work.
It should be noted that the quality of information sources varies and some population, condition and trend information are more robust and well-researched than others. Needs assessment, and in particular trend forecasting, is not an exact science, predictions tend to be more accurate at a general, larger population level and because of this we have aimed to keep key messages very strategic at this stage in this summary.
How the JSNA is used
The JSNA forms an integral part of the commissioning cycle by providing assessment of current and future need, and identifying gaps in current provision. Local plans are developed in light of the findings and recommendations of the JSNA such as:
- NHS North of Tyne’s strategic plan and annual operating plan
- Sustainable community strategy
- Local area agreement
- Council plan
- Planning and commissioning for both children's and adult health and social care services
Involvement from people who use health and social care services as well as those providing services from Northumberland Care Trust, Northumberland County Council and community and voluntary sector will be essential for the ongoing success of the JSNA in Northumberland.
Information from the JSNA is already being used to direct the commissioning and planning of health and social care services in the county.
