The change needed to make Personalised Care business as usual in the NHS

The change needed to make Personalised Care business as usual in the NHS by Catherine Wilton (@CatherineWilton) and Nicola Gitsham (@nicolagitsham)

The final live webinar of the School for Change Agents will be on Thursday 27 June 2019 at 3pm UK time: Leading Change in Personalised Care. You can find details of how to join.

Personalised care means giving people have choice and control over the way their care is planned and delivered, based on ‘what matters’ to them.  It is one of the five major changes to the NHS that were promised in the NHS Long-Term Plan.

For personalised care to be business as usual it needs to be everyone’s business. Therefore, we need change champions. Change champions are ambassadors who can inspire others, convene conversations and support each other as allies as we move forward. 

For personalised care to become a reality and to change the lives of thousands of people, we need:

• To understand personalisation and community-based approaches. Unless people understand it at a personal level and are committed to it, it won’t be real. People also need a good understanding of rights, independent living and the social model of disability.
• To develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to lead change, however small, and make a difference in our teams, organisations or local areas 
• To build alliances, partnerships and coalitions of the willing across all agencies that influence people’s lives and their local communities
• For it to be everyone’s business

People trying to make it happen on the ground are telling us:

• Senior leaders need to champion this, give permission to experiment and help remove barriers. We need leaders who get this and to help us to spread the word!
• More of us need to ‘convene’ conversations about personalised care
• The change must be designed at a local level with people with lived experience and those from the voluntary sector, community sector and social care
• Let’s build a common purpose – it brings us together and focuses the mind
• Personalised care needs to be built into all other plans, like local workforce development and commissioning  
• We can’t do this overnight but we need to share stories to show what’s possible and keep people engaged  
• As we scale out our smaller projects we have to make sure we retain quality otherwise it will undermine the whole process

What can I do to support this movement?

Change Agents, we need your help to champion person-centred, outcome focused, asset-based system leadership rooted in neighbourhoods and communities that puts people in the driving seat of their lives, their health and their communities.

Your first step is to make a pledge, what will you do to join our mission? We'd like to invite you to tweet your pledge to @LECPC and use the hashtag #PersonalisedCare 

We'd like to invite you to sign up to receive updates about the Leadership for Empowered Communities and Personalised Care programme – coming to a region near you very soon.