Personalisation in health and care requires new models of leadership

Earlier this year, NHS England published their comprehensive model of Universal Personalised Care, building on the Long Term Plan’s ambition to make personalised care business as usual across the health and care system

This vision builds on the research and practice of a growing community of people and organisations from within and outside the health and care system. This includes Nesta’s work on People Powered Health and the work of many of our partners in the Coalition for Collaborative Care (C4CC) (which Nesta co-founded).

Through our work we have learned that fresh approaches to leadership are vital to the success of this vision - and this is why ‘Reimagining Leadership’ was chosen as the focus of this year’s Future of People Powered Health, Nesta’s annual health summit.

Why do we need a new model of leadership?

Supporting people to be the main decision makers about their health means enabling people to express their own needs and decide on their own priorities in partnership with professionals, who recognise an individual’s assets, strengths and abilities, not just their needs. It means co-ordinating help around the whole person.

Despite its increasing currency in policy, genuine co-production is radical. It takes courage and commitment. For the past seven years, the Coalition for Collaborative Care has delivered a programme supporting new leaders and now we are recruiting to an eighth cohort. This year we have an added emphasis on leadership for personalised care, to reflect the aspirations in the NHS Long-Term Plan to give people more choice and control in their care and support.

Personalised care means planning and delivering services based on ‘what matters’ to people and their families. It means meaningful, better conversations underpinning care and support planning and social prescribing to connect people to their communities – key to improving wellbeing and quality of life. It is all underpinned by co-production – a shift in power, doing things ‘with’ people not ‘for’ or ‘to’ them.

However, despite the change in policy and growing evidence of the value of prevention and better integration, achieving large scale change across the health and social care system is difficult. This kind of change calls for a new type of leader – one who can work across boundaries, who can make connections and facilitate the ‘emergence’ of local, co-produced plans and solutions.

The Leadership for Empowered Communities and Personalised Care is completely co-produced and co-facilitated by a team of national experts, made up of leaders, activists, and specialists in co-production, community development and personalised care, many of whom have lived experience.

It is a blended learning programme for middle and senior leaders wanting to lead change in co-production with citizens and to embed personalised care and community-based support across health and care.

Applications for this cohort are open now and close on 6th September 2019. If you share our vision for a new model of care that puts people at the centre and are keen to learn and to grow in leading this sort of change then get in touch!

Author

Catherine Wilton

Catherine is the Director of Coalition for Collaborative Care, an Associate of the NHS Leadership Academy and Deputy Director Personalised Care (Leadership).