39 Suffolk and North East Essex ICS | ‘Our Journey Together’ Picture – Suffolk and North East Essex ICS ‘Summer School’ 2025 • As key partners in the ICS our local Healthwatch organisations have played a significant role asking local people about a range of health issues and their experiences of services, and their work has helped to shape health and care services locally; • The ICS People and Communities Assembly hears local people’s voices directly and provides a route for local groups and communities to communicate the issues that are important to them; • The ICS VCFSE Assembly has given a voice to this diverse sector to share the lives and challenges of the groups and communities they support, as well as what works best to meet their diverse needs; • The Integrated Care Academy ran a number of programmes that connected stakeholders around common interests including co-production and the ‘One Team’ programme that was pivotal to building working relationships that underpinned the development of Integrated Neighbourhood Teams; • Various cross system forums organised regular meetings and also held events to engage stakeholders with common interests – e.g. cancer, urgent and emergency care, PPGs, community based research, arts and culture; • Training co-designed and co-delivered by the ICP secretariat (previously the ICS central team) encompassed outcomebased approaches and health equity. During 2025 a ‘summer school’ focusing on system working, managing relationships, evidence based working and culture and leadership delivered workshops to more than 300 people across Suffolk and North East Essex and also Norfolk and Waveney. The importance of building belonging Many stakeholders also commented on how over time they gradually felt a sense of ‘belonging’ to the ‘system’ as well as to their employing organisations. The system had some stability of leaders over time, however inevitably people still come and go but stakeholders said that they felt a sense that there really was a ‘we’ when it came to being part of the Suffolk and North East Essex ICS – and this was across many different groups, forums and sectors. Stakeholders thought that this was largely down to the culture in system spaces that genuinely valued relationships and some practices that enabled this culture to become embedded. They said that they felt included and involved and they often had fond memories of the things that we did together – for example the annual celebration of Christmas Jumper Day at the December ICB Board or ICP Committee. Several stakeholders referred specifically to the importance of the role of the ICS Central Team which later became the ICP Secretariat in encouraging a sense of belonging for them by actively facilitating their involvement and ensuring parity of esteem in system meetings and events. Picture – the annual Christmas jumper day at Suffolk and North East Essex ICS Board in 2018 (left) and 2019 (right)
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