Health news & updates

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Information for forums

NHS Long Term Plan

The NHS Long Term Plan was published in January 2019 and outlines priorities and areas of work that the NHS as a whole will be working towards over the next 10 years. You can read the summary or the full document.

The NHS Long Term Plan follows on from the Five Year Forward View published in 2015 and outlines the priorities and areas of work that are aimed at redesigning patient care and ‘future-proofing’ the NHS.

Below are just a few highlights from the document, we will know more about how these may work in practice as the plan develops.

If you would like more information on what the NHS Long Term Plan might mean to you and your forum, contact your Parent Carer Participation Adviser or your NNPCF regional representative.

  • Increased funding for children & young people’s mental health services.
  • Sustainability & Transformation Partnerships (STP’s) will become integrated care systems (ICS).
  • Improving NHS wide understanding of the needs of people with learning disability and autism.
  • Expanding primary care (GP’s) and multi-agency ‘neighbourhood teams’ with individual GP’s becoming part of a ‘primary care network’.

For more information see Health Resources and Engaging with local health partners.

National Institute for Health & Care Excellence (NICE)

There are a number of NICE guidelines in development that relate to children & young people with SEND that forums may wish to follow the progress of. Many of these guidelines are at the begining of a process to develop the guidleines. If you are interesting in knowing more about how NICE develops its guidelines and quality standards see NICE – development

Find out how well your Clinical Commissioning Group is performing

My NHS allows you to look up your local CCG (and other healthcare providers) and see how well they are performing against the Improvement and Assessment Framework Guidance for CCGs.

One area that is particularly relevant is the Patient and Community Engagement Indicator. NHS England has recently released some guidance for CCG’s on how well they are meeting the statutory guidance on patient and public participation in commissioning health and care.

You will find your CCG’s performance for Patient and Community Engagement under the Leadership/Well Led section of the CCG data.

NHS England Quick Guides

NHS England has published two Quick Guides to aid health commissioners and providers with joint commissioning of services and provide guidance on developing processes to ensure that children and young people with SEND are fully supported. Forums could send onto your local health commissioners.

The guides are:

1) Guidance for health services for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND).

2) Commissioning for transition to adult services for young people with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND).

You can find the guides on NHS England’s SEND pages.