Working Together in Neighbourhoods

Primary Care Networks (PCNs)

Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are crucial to the implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan, both through more resilient delivery of primary care in local neighbourhoods, and the integration of health and care services to better respond to the characteristics and needs of the local population. PCNs are key to addressing the wider ICS ambitions to improve population health and wellbeing, and to building lasting relationships between our partners.

We have 102 GP practices in our ICS footprint and as of 1st July 2019, 24 PCNs. These cover the full geography and provide 100% coverage of the ICS area. All PCNs have been established with Clinical Directors identified.

As an Integrated Care System our ambition is to continue to enable Primary Care Networks to mature and thrive; meeting local need and national expectations. Our Roadmap to achieve this has 12 key steps, many of which are built on firm foundations of collaborative working and which will now be accelerated by national PCN policy and investment:

• We will continue our investment in Clinical Directors and wider management teams across each Alliance and within localities; building capability, capacity and confidence to deliver our plans. Each Alliance and locality is completing its ‘maturity matrix’ and a local progression plan
• We now have local needs assessments and emerging asset maps for each of our localities. These will be continuously refreshed and actively used to inform PCN and locality plans to meet local needs and tackle local inequalities. In due course these will be supplemented and potentially superseded by Population Health Management tools.

Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs)

 Each of our place-based Alliances is developing multi-professional, and increasingly multi-agency, Integrated Neighbourhood Teams who will deliver the shared ICS ambitions of true integrated care to local communities of typically around 50,000. There are 8 INTs in Ipswich and East Suffolk Alliance and 6 each in North-East Essex and West Suffolk, a total of 20 across the System. The intent is to increasingly delegate responsibility and resources to local INTs to manage in line with the principle of subsidiarity. The development of the teams has been facilitated by the One Team shared leadership development programmes.

The INTs are all at different levels of maturity and they are not as yet all geographically aligned with the evolving PCNs. However, the common trend is for them to incorporate local representation from all the ICS partner agencies, with the core being Community Services, Social Care and Community Mental Health and to each have a leadership structure e.g. a single INT Manager has been appointed to INTs in Ipswich and East Suffolk. Over time the expectation is any front-line member of staff working in any of these areas will report into the people on the local INT leadership team.

The following provides an overview of Integrated Neighbourhood Teams within the Ipswich and East Suffolk Alliance footprint.