Summary of a network members discussion group held on 27 April 2023

At this discussion session our guests were representing a great mix of organisations from Acute Trusts, Integrated Care Boards and Local Authorities across the UK.

Data protection is something that crops up in many of our network discussion groups. While there is a great need for it there are times when not being able to share patient data can cause frustrating barriers and inevitably delays.

While integrated working and being patient centred enabling them to provide a good service for their patients is high on everyone's agenda there is a lack of clarity and understanding around requirements in some areas.

It was recognised that with systems level working there's a need to work with the smaller organisations across each ICS patch and not just the national voluntary sector organisations. This brings its own challenges when smaller VCS organisations may not have the infrastructure in place to protect data or to protect themselves against legal action if anything goes wrong. Additionally, they may not have the financial capacity or the staff capacity to manage those processes effectively.

There was a suggestion that those smaller organisations should be represented at the very earliest stages of any conversations around commissioning and collaborative working to ensure that their views are represented right from the start and that they are involved in the decision making.

One organisation has been working with an external VCSE organisation for over 20 years so sharing data is not new to them. They have a data sharing agreement with the GDPR leads allowing them to share, with the patient’s permission, their name and contact details.

However, more patient data may be required for a volunteer welfare call so that there is a package of information to feed back to a clinician. For a Trust project, consent is not required as the data is already held, however the difference is that the Trust can call around 1,000 patients a week against 12 people for a typical VCSE organisation.

Further reading

The Voluntary Partnerships team commissioned King’s Fund to understand more about the barriers to embedding the VCSE sector in Integrated Care Systems.

This new report aims to support leaders in statutory and VCSE organisations alike to develop improved partnership working by identifying and testing approaches to tackle these barriers.
The barriers explored include:

• commissioning, service design and delivery
• sharing data, insight and intelligence
• funding and sustainable investment

You can find the Publication here https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/actions-to-support-partnership

Learning captured from ICSs demonstrates that small actions can support greater integration, but underlying these is a commitment to building greater understanding, new relationships and developing ways of working which maximise the capability and capacity of all organisations to contribute equally.

There is also a framework that sits alongside the report which you can find on NHS England Voluntary Partnership team and invites you to the Working in Partnership with the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise Sector network. This workspace is designed for those working in health and care systems to share information, learning and resources showcasing collaborative working between the NHS, local government, the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector and other local partners.

There are a range of tools and resources available on the workspace, including the Framework for addressing practical barriers to integration of VCSE sector organisations which provides:

• An overview of the three areas which form the main barriers and challenges to partnership working between the VCSE and statutory sector, which are commissioning, service design and delivery; sharing data, insight and intelligence, and; funding and sustainable investment.

• A menu of approaches that others have adopted or are trying which can support addressing those barriers
• A series of detailed case examples drawn from different ICSs which provide an understanding of the processes that people have gone through which take account of the journey of implementation and local context.