Over the past few years health and care services have worked together with increasing collaboration in Norfolk and Waveney, as they have done across the country with the development of Integrated Care Systems. Information about Integrated Care Systems is also available in Easy Read.

Together we have developed our Integrated Care Strategy, which sets the overall direction for how we will help people in Norfolk and Waveney to live longer, healthier and happier lives. This strategy builds on what you have already told us over the last four years what matters to you and how you would like to see local health and care services develop in the future. The strategy cannot be delivered by any one organisation, but needs collaboration across health, social care, district council’s voluntary organisations and communities themselves.

The four key themes in our integrated care strategy are:

• Driving integration: Collaborating in the delivery of people-centred care to make sure services are joined-up, consistent and make sense to those who use them.
• Prioritising prevention: A shared commitment to supporting people to be healthy, independent, and resilient throughout life. Offering our help early to prevent and reduce demand for specialist services.
• Addressing inequalities: Providing support for those who are most vulnerable using resources and assets to address wider factors that impact on health and wellbeing.
• Enabling resilient communities: Supporting people to remain independent whenever possible, through promotion of self-care, early prevention, and digital technology where appropriate.

NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board, working with partner organisations is now developing a five-year plan for health and care services in Norfolk and Waveney. It will set-out in more detail how the local NHS and care services will implement our Integrated Care Strategy, as well as how we will address more immediate priorities around improving urgent and emergency care, primary care and mental health services, reduce waits for planned treatments, surgery and care, as well as improve our financial position.

We felt it was important to check whether what you have said over the last few years still holds true, or whether because of the COVID-19 pandemic and everything else that has happened over the past few years, what’s important to local people and what they would like us to be focusing on has changed. As a result, we undertook an engagement exercise between December 2022 to January 2023 which aimed to give our staff, partner organisations, people and communities across Norfolk and Waveney the opportunity to have their say at an early stage on what is important to them and what they wanted to see in our plan.

We asked whether our immediate priorities for health and care services for the next two years listed below are correct. 

1. Urgent and emergency care – when you are unwell, these services provide support and care and can involve your local doctor or hospital services for more urgent issues such as a stroke, heart attacks, severe blood loss and severe respiratory illness
2. Primary care – this is your local doctor, sometimes known as general practice. Other services that make up primary care are local pharmacies, dentists and opticians
3. Elective recovery – over the last two years in particular, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have had to wait for surgery, procedure or treatment. Reducing our waiting lists is a big priority.
4. Improving mental health services – across Norfolk and Waveney, we want people to have safe, effective and efficient mental health services that they deserve. Part of this programme is about supporting improvements across specialist mental health provision, as well as ensuring there are more services in local communities to help keep people emotionally well.
5. Improving our financial position – health and care services cost a lot of money but we are determined to continue to make improvements to health and care services across Norfolk and Waveney. This might mean that some services have to reduce, whilst others increase. Above all, we need to make sure that we can provide the right care for people at the right time and right place. And doing so, we need to make sure we stay within the budget we have allocated.

The feedback we received and what we will do as a result of what you have told us can be read here.

Our plan had to be finalised by the end of June 2023, but this won’t be the end of the conversation. There will be a range of projects that we will need deliver in order to implement our plan and for each of these there will be more engagement, involvement and co-production with local people, those who use our services and our workforce. This will help us to create services that meet the needs of the different people and groups that live in Norfolk and Waveney