Health and Social Care Partnerships, (HSCPs) are organisations formed to integrate services provided by Health Boards and Councils in Scotland. Each partnership is jointly run by the

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

and local authority. There are 31 HSCPs across Scotland. These are statutory bodies, which took over responsibilities from

Community Health Partnership Community Health Partnerships, known as CHPs (pronounced ''Chips'') were subdivisions of Health Boards in Scotland, from 2005 to 2015, after which their functions were fully taken over by Health and Social Care Partnerships in April 2015. CHPs ha ...

s. They are responsible for £8.5 billion of funding for local services.

List of HSCPs

The Health and Social Care Partnerships are: * Aberdeen City HSCP * Aberdeenshire HSCP * Angus HSCP * Argyll and Bute HSCP * City of Edinburgh HSCP * Clackmannanshire and Stirling HSCP * Dumfries and Galloway HSCP * Dundee City HSCP * East Ayrshire HSCP * East Dunbartonshire HSCP * East Lothian HSCP * East Renfrewshire HSCP * Falkirk HSCP * Fife HSCP * Glasgow City HSCP * Highland HSCP * Inverclyde HSCP * Midlothian HSCP * Moray HSCP * North Ayrshire HSCP * North Lanarkshire HSCP * Orkney HSCP * Perth and Kinross HSCP * Renfrewshire HSCP * Scottish Borders HSCP * Shetland Islands HSCP * South Ayrshire HSCP * South Lanarkshire HSCP * West Dunbartonshire HSCP * West Lothian HSCP * Western Isles (Comhairle nan Eilean Siar) HSCP

Framework

The ''Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014'' provides the legislative framework for the integration of health and social care in Scotland. Ahead of the legislation coming into effect, an Integrated Resource Framework (IRF) was developed and tested, with HSCP models tested in four localities:

Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

;

Lothian Lothian (; sco, Lowden, Loudan, -en, -o(u)n; gd, Lodainn ) is a region of the Scottish Lowlands, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills and the Moorfoot Hills. The principal settlement is the Sco ...

;

Ayrshire Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of Re ...

and Arran; and

Tayside Tayside ( gd, Taobh Tatha) was one of the nine regions used for local government in Scotland from 15 May 1975 to 31 March 1996. The region was named for the River Tay. It was created by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, following recom ...

. Two models of integration were made available for health boards and local authorities to choose between: * ''lead agency'', where arrangements delegation between partners * ''body corporate'', also known as Integrated Joint Boards The only area where a lead agency model was adopted was Highland, where the health and social care budgets have been merged since 2012. The three HSCPs in East, North and South Ayrshire were the first to become fully functioning under the new legislation, with their Integration Joint Boards legally constituted on 2 April 2015. When Scottish Government's plans to implement legislation for integrated HSCPs were publicised in 2012, it was reported that each HSCP would be able to improve

elderly care Elderly care, or simply eldercare (also known in parts of the English-speaking world as aged care), serves the needs and requirements of senior citizens. It encompasses assisted living, adult daycare, long-term care, nursing homes (often called re ...

by cutting delayed discharges, reducing unplanned admissions to hospital and increasing the number of older people who are cared for in their own home.

Implementation of the HSCP Model

In December 2016 the Scottish Government set out its Health and Social Care Delivery Plan. In 2017 they published standards setting out what people should expect when using health, social care or social work services in Scotland. Audit Scotland published a report in November 2018 on progress to date which stated "There are examples of integrated health and social care services making a positive difference to people’s lives, but these tend to be local and small scale" and that "Integration Authorities, councils and NHS boards need to show a stronger commitment to collaborative working to achieve the real long term benefits of an integrated system." In 2019 Scottish Government's Ministerial Strategic Group for Health and Community Care published a progress review on how implementation was going. The latter accepted the recommendations in the Audit Scotland report of the previous year, and put forward 25 proposals of its own, each with an implementation period of less than 12 months, reflecting the members' "shared commitment to making integration work".

References

{{reflist

External links

Integration of Health and Social Care
on Scottish Government website
Map of HSCPs by NHS board
on Scottish Government website NHS Scotland Social care in Scotland