Wirral Integrated Care System

What are integrated care systems?

Integrated care is about giving people the support they need, joined up across local councils, the NHS, and other partners. It removes traditional divisions between hospitals and family doctors, between physical and mental health, and between NHS and council services. In the past, these divisions have meant that too many people experienced disjointed care.

Integrated care systems (ICSs) are new partnerships between the organisations that meet health and care needs across an area, to coordinate services and to plan in a way that improves population health and reduces inequalities between different groups.

Since 2018, they have been deepening the relationship in many areas between the NHS, local councils and other important strategic partners such as the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. They have developed better and more convenient services, invested in keeping people healthy and out of hospital and set shared priorities for the future.

The NHS Long Term Plan confirmed that all parts of England would be served by an integrated care system from April 2021, building on the lessons of the earliest systems and the achievements of earlier work through sustainability and transformation partnerships and vanguards.

With each part of the country now ready to function as an ICS, NHS England and NHS Improvement has asked the Government and Parliament to establish ICSs in law and to remove legal barriers to integrated care for patients and communities. Decisions on legislation will now be for Government and Parliament to make.

NHS Cheshire and Merseyside

Since July 1st 2022 NHS Cheshire and Merseyside – an Integrated Care Board – has held responsibility for planning NHS services, including Primary Care, community pharmacy and those previously planned by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).

NHS Cheshire and Merseyside website

Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership

Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership – an Integrated Care Partnership – will operate as a statutory committee consisting of health and care partners from across the region, including voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) organisations and independent healthcare providers.

It provides a forum for NHS leaders and local authorities to come together, as equal partners, alongside key stakeholders from across Cheshire and Merseyside.

A key role of the partnership is to assess the health, public health and social care needs of Cheshire and Merseyside and to produce a strategy to address them – thereby helping to improve people’s health and care outcomes and experiences.

Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership website

Wirral Place Based Partnership Board

NHS Cheshire and Merseyside will arrange for some of its functions to be delivered and decisions about NHS funding to be made in the region’s nine Places – Cheshire East, Cheshire West, Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, Warrington, Wirral.

While NHS Cheshire and Merseyside will retain overall accountability for NHS resources deployed at Place-level, Place-based partnerships – led by Place Directors – will have freedom to design and deliver services according to local need.

Wirral Place Based Partnership Board meetings