Hello all,

I’ve always seen springtime as a hopeful season, bringing transformation and change. Change is certainly afoot in South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership (SLH&SCP).

This blog is timely as I write it to coincide with Breaking the Rules for Better Care Week, which runs from 27 March until 31 March.

We want staff and partners across SLH&SCP and, crucially, people who use health and social care services, to help us identify and share the well intentioned rules, habits, policies and procedures that get in the way of delivering the very best care possible.

Breaking the Rules for Better Care Week is not about taking shortcuts. Patient and service user safety is, and always will be, our number one priority. Breaking the Rules for Better Care Week is about continually seeking to improve the experiences of people who use health and social care services.

I’d urge you to get involved. We’re asking a simple question. If you could break or change one rule to create better care for people in South Lanarkshire, what would it be and why?

You can either email your views to bettercare@lanarkshire.scot.nhs.uk or fill in our anonymous online questionnaire. Your feedback counts. Please do take part.

In previous blogs I told you that developing our localities was a top priority. Progress is moving apace there too. We’ve now appointed our locality managers for each of South Lanarkshire’s four localities.

Tom Bryce is locality manager for Rutherglen and Cambuslang, Nadia Ait-Hocine is locality manager for East Kilbride. Marilyn Aitken is locality manager for Clydesdale and Deborah Mackle is locality manager for Hamilton. Michelle McConnachie is the social work service manager, a post spanning the four localities.

These are key leadership posts. All will be working with you in your localities to build on current good practice and stretch our collective ambitions to create excellent integrated, people-facing services.

Their remit will include operational management responsibility of all health and social care services, with the aim of optimal response to local population needs as well as clear and cohesive local leadership.

I’m also delighted to tell you that Marianne Hayward has now taken up her post as head of health for our partnership.

Marianne comes from a senior AHP manager position in NHS Ayrshire/Arran and brings significant experience of health care management and change management to South Lanarkshire.

These posts all represent valuable additions to our leadership as we tackle challenges together. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing all well.

In terms of what’s coming up, we’re planning to run stakeholder engagement session in the summer. From the output of these sessions we’ll make recommendations around next steps on integration to the autumn Integrated Joint Board. We’ll update you on that in the near future.

In early summer we will also be inviting Nurture Development, a community capacity building team, to South Lanarkshire for a few days to inspire our thinking about identifying community strengths and positive energy. The goal is to be enablers, build on these strengths, on what’s strong in our communities and to share these strengths right across the Partnership.

In short, there’s much on the go, things are changing – and we continue to listen. With your help and support we can ensure that change is for the better.

You can read our initial return for each of these indicators by visiting THIS LINK

Our response takes into account the unpredictability around demographic growth and the potential impact of that on the system.

As well as performance reporting, as a management team we are spending a lot of time on financial management and indeed on maximising attendance in the workforce.

Lastly, I am sometimes reminded of the phrase “when you walk in the fog you take small steps”. There have been – and will be times in our journey – where we feel we’re in uncharted and, indeed, foggy territory.

Whilst some territory may seem unfamiliar, I think it’s important to remember that we have clear direction.

We have common goals – the nine national health and wellbeing outcomes.

We’ve just had these all important outcomes injected with some colour – so please visit THIS LINK to see more.

Thank you for reading. Happy springtime and, indeed, Eastertide.

Val de Souza.
Director of Health and Social Care
South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership

Val’s next open door is Consulting Room 3, Larkhall Health Clinic, Low Pleasance, Larkhall, ML9 2HW – 30 March from 14.30. Please phone Giuliana Gustinelli on 01698 453700 or email giuliana.gustinelli@southlanarkshire.gcsx.gov.uk to reserve a place.