Integrated Care Partnership

Integrated care partnerships (ICPs) are alliances of NHS providers that work together to deliver care by agreeing to collaborate rather than compete.

These providers include hospitals, community services, mental health services and GPs, social care and independent and third sector providers.

The pursuit of ‘integration’ is about ensuring that the right partnerships, policies, incentives and processes are in place to support practitioners and local organisations to work together to help people live healthier and more independent lives for longer. ICPs will play a critical role in making this happen.

The establishment in law of an integrated NHS and local authority model for ICSs places ICPs on a statutory footing, building on existing partnerships and collaboration across the whole system.

Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Partnership Strategy

The Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent draft Integrated Care Partnership strategy addresses the broad health and social care needs of our local population. It focuses on long-term ways to improve the overall health of our area.

This goes beyond treating sickness, to tackling the causes of ill health such as employment, environment, and housing issues. The strategy will be the guide for us when making decisions, commissioning and delivering services.

As a statutory committee, ICPs will:

The legislation has been framed in a deliberately permissive way, and this is particularly true for ICPs.

There are several models already being developed as ICSs have evolved and there is a real opportunity for different systems to learn from one another as ICSs develop.

We see this variation as a strength and, therefore, want to avoid constraining innovation and encourage iterative learning through the legislation or guidance.

ICPs will have a critical role to play in ICSs, facilitating joint action to improve health and care outcomes and experiences across their populations, and influencing the wider determinants of health, including creating healthier environments and inclusive and sustainable economies.

They will consider what arrangements work best in their local area by creating a dedicated forum to enhance relationships between the leaders across the health and care system.

For example, the NHS, local government, adult social care, employment support, and VCSE coming together to build a culture of partnership and broad collaborations to promote and support holistic care.

ICPs’ central role is in the planning and improvement of health and care. They should support place-based partnerships and coalitions with community partners which are well-situated to act on the wider determinants of health in local areas. ICP should bring the statutory and non-statutory interests of places together.

ICPs will be required to develop an integrated care strategy to address the broad health and social care needs of the population within the ICP’s area, including determinants of health such as employment, environment, and housing issues. ICBs and local authorities will be required by law to have regard to the ICP’s strategy when making decisions, commissioning and delivering services.

Further opportunities to enable the alignment of ICBs, local authorities and ICPs through guidance are being explored and we welcome views on this.

The ICP is expected to highlight where coordination is needed on health and care issues and challenge partners to deliver the action required. These include, but are not limited to: