In July, IFIC Ireland convened its first formal meeting of its Steering Group members. IFIC Ireland Steering Group will help take forward IFIC’s mission and aims across the region on a more sustained basis, and a commitment to advise, discuss and prioritize IFIC Ireland’s future activities in the region. The Steering Group will have a mutual commitment to standards of excellence in advancing the science, knowledge and the support to adoption of integrated care in policy and practice and will seek to work together to develop projects, educational activities or material of mutual benefit that meet the aims and objectives of IFIC Ireland.
Our Steering Group is comprised of Chairperson, Dr Sloan Harper; Directors, Prof Áine Carroll and Fiona Lyne; IFIC Ireland Co-ordinator, Karen O’Connell; IFIC Ireland Communications Officer, Darren Curran; Dr Siobhán Ní Bhríain, HSE National Clinical Advisor and General Lead for Integrated Care; Martin Hayes, HSCNI Programmes Director for Integrated Care Partnerships; Muriel Farrell, Programme Lead Department of Health SláinteCare Implementation Office; Jacqui Browne, Chairperson Disabled Persons Organisations Coalition.
We extend our sincere thanks to all our Steering Group members for their commitment to and support of IFIC Ireland and look forward to working with you all as part of the IFIC Ireland family.
In October, IFIC Ireland launched the Knowledge Tree for Ireland at the SláinteCare Integration Fund Projects Learning Network event. The Knowledge Tree is a one-stop shop for integrated care resources relevant to an Irish context that is easily accessible, searchable, current and extensible and will grow to become a global resource for IFIC produced resources and integrated care published research. IFIC Ireland will continue to develop features and useful searches for the Knowledge Tree along with implementing technical updates and processes along with our partners in IFIC Central and the IFIC family. You can explore what we’ve already published here.
IFIC Ireland hosted 7 webinars throughout 2020 – 6 in our ‘Making Integrated Care Happen’ series and ‘Digital Solutions: Adoption, Adaptation and their role in post Covid-19 health and social care delivery’ as part of IFIC’s ‘Care during and beyond the COVID-19 Crisis’. There were 990 registrants across the 7 sessions from 65 countries. We were privileged to feature speakers from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Catalonia, Wales and England who enabled conversations around Social Prescribing, End of Life and Palliative Care, Inclusion Health, Digital Solutions, the Role of Community, Rehabilitation Care and the impacts of Covid-19. Our sincere thanks to all those who attended, contributed, chaired and supported the webinar series and looking forward to our new series starting in Spring 2021. If there are topics or themes you would like us to explore as part of the programme for future webinars, please send us your suggestions.
As our in-person events had to be cancelled due to Covid-19, IFIC offered IFIC Ireland the opportunity for our partners to nominate attendees for ICIC20 in place of attending the All-Ireland Forum and Workshops. 130 people availed of an offer of funded day delegate places with our partners from the HSE, HSCNI and SláinteCare. The conference took place over 4 Wednesdays in September and attracted 1000+ researchers, administrators, clinicians, educators and students from over 60 countries. All materials are accessible for 12 months on the conference platform for all attendees and the plenary sessions are featured on IFIC’s Vimeo channel including IFIC Ireland’s directors, Prof Áine Carroll and Fiona Lyne.
We have lots of plans for 2021 including a webinar series, hosting a stream at ICIC21 Virtual in May, supporting the first cohort of students from the island of Ireland to participate in the Certificate in Integrated Care and more. We’d love to hear from you about how we can best support our network so if there are specific areas of interest or activities to help support you, please get in touch.
Merry Christmas from all at IFIC Ireland!
Karen O’Connell
Co-ordinator, IFIC Ireland
karenoconnell@integratedcarefoundation.org