Care needed to deliver health and social services in Calderdale

Council leader Tim Swift pledged in a written response to a public question that consultation will take place where appropriate as Calderdale Cares is developed.

Government has set a target for health and social care integration to be achieved across England by 2020, so it is an agenda that must be addressed, said Councillor Swift at the start of the year, with monitoring through this spring by the council’s Health and Wellbeing Board, which noted his response and which will next meet in June.

Coun Swift (Lab, Town) said that as and when the ambitions of Calderdale Cares led to ideas for service change there would be a dialogue with the public about what these changes meant for them.

Health and social care integration was not starting from a blank sheet of paper, he said, and not all the challenges were new, for example integrating National Health Service services that were free at the point of delivery with means-assessed and charged for social care services.

The council would continue to work with NHS partners to make sure the right to free NHS services was protected through any changes, he said.