Moving Forward

The past four years have seen great change for health and social care services in Southwark.   We now have teams of social workers and district nurses supported by nutritionists, occupational therapists, pharmacists and other health and social care professionals sitting and working together providing seamless support to individual clients.

We have joined with education to develop a new children’s services department and we are committed to offering all children, young people and their families opportunities for better health, safety, security, success and happiness.

Our staff have embraced these changes and we are now beginning to deliver the fruits of our labour and deliver the seamless services that have been talked about for many years.  The care that we are providing local people continues to improve as a result and we would like to thank all our staff and partners in the voluntary and statutory sector for all their hard work.

In the year ahead we once again face many challenges. We need to continue to modernise and improve our performance and meet increasing public expectations in an environment that is shaped by a need for financial rigour to ensure balanced budgets.

Specifically our agenda includes:

• further integration of health and social care
• providing care closer to people’s homes
• creating new commissioning arrangements.

These themes are also picked up and developed in the enduring vision for health and social care that runs through recent policy developments and Government White Papers and is characterised by:

• choice and personalisation
• services designed around the user
• better access
• better preventative services with earlier intervention
• more choice and a louder voice
• tackling health inequalities
• more support for people with long-term needs.

We spend £100 million more on health services in Southwark today than when the PCT was formed in 2002. We have a bigger system with more people getting more care more quickly. We also have a demanding agenda of reform and increasing public expectations, coupled with increasing cost pressures, that has left the PCT with a budget gap of some £20million in 2006/07. This is five per cent of our budget. A significant amount but one that we can manage.

We need to be sure that the actions we take to manage our resources are consistent with what we want to do. Our work to manage demand is aimed at bringing services into the community where possible and appropriate and reducing the use of high tech, high cost acute services. But we cannot achieve all the savings this way and we are looking to reduce management costs and increase efficiency.

Continuity will go hand in hand with change. Partnership remains at the core of how we work. We will continue to increase our focus and our expertise as a commissioning organisation. Our provision of health and social care services will become increasingly integrated and contestable, with a developing mix of providers from the independent and voluntary sectors.  Structures will change to make us better equipped to manage these trends and support services.  In particular we will develop services across the whole system of health and social care and, in some instances, children’s services as well.

By maintaining our clear vision and direction and engaging the public in identifying local priorities we can meet the financial challenges.  Since our inception we have established a PCT that is among the best in London and our social care services are among the best in the country. We have a lot to be proud of and we should continue to celebrate our successes.

Mee Ling Ng, Chair	Chris Bull, Chief Executive	Dr Amr Zeineldine, Professional Executive Committee Chair