WIREDGOV

Health Secretary, Vaughan Gething, has announced £1.7m funding for a Cwmtawe project to develop new models of health and social care.

The funding comes from the £100m Transformation Fund to support key actions from the Welsh Government’s long term plan for health and social care, A Healthier Wales.

The Cwmtawe Cluster project, developed by the West Wales Regional Partnership Board, will receive £1.731m over two years to develop new ways of working, better integrating health and social care. The best ideas can then be scaled up and rolled-out across Wales.

The project has three overall aims: 

• Improve wellbeing across the age spectrum, with a particular focus on ensuring children have the best start in life to be the healthiest that they can be.
• Co-ordinate services to maximise wellbeing, independence and care closer to home. With a particular focus on older people to develop new models of care closer to home and reducing unscheduled admissions. 
• Test and evaluate the models of care that could be rolled out across Wales.

Some of the new ways of working, which have already started include:

• Clydach Community Hub, to enable people to access all Swansea Council services from October 2018 through a digital gateway. With access other partner organisations’ services too, either digitally, or via volunteers. 
• An integrated health and social care team serving the Cwmtawe cluster is based in Gorseinon Hospital and Clydach Primary Care Centre.
• New workers to link up health and social care.
• Same day GP appointments and a new IT system to allow access to patient records away from the GP practice. 

Mr Gething yesterday said: 

“Our long term plan for health and social care, sets out how we will transform the way we deliver care to ensure it is sustainable in the future. 

“This will require better integration of health and social services to reduce reliance on hospitals and deliver care closer to home. The Transformation Fund will be used to fund a small number of projects which have the most impact in developing and delivering new models of care, and which have potential to scale up so they can be used across Wales. 

“The Cwmtawe Cluster already has a strong background in collaborative working and innovative thinking. I look forward to seeing the results from these new ways of working.”

Dr Iestyn Davies, Cwmtawe Cluster lead yesterday said:

“We at Cwmtawe are thrilled with this very exciting announcement. The investment will really help us restructure and modernise the way we offer care to patients.  

“We are delighted that Welsh Government recognises our vision for patient-focused primary care, which has a strong emphasis on supporting our communities and working with them to help keep people well – not only treating them when they are sick. 

“This investment will allow us to expand our multi-disciplinary teams, giving patients better access to a wide range of healthcare professionals in their community, and bring some services traditionally accessed in hospitals closer to home.”