As we reflect on 2022 our highlight was undoubtedly reconnecting with IFICs global community at ICIC22. Marie Curran supported IFICs communications team by recording voices of lived experience from across the globe to ground the opening plenary. Vicki Cloney and Ann Wardlaw were runners up in the Patient and Caregiver award for their paper about Inverclyde’s Resilience Network. We were pleased to share insights from Scotland in the final plenary, signposting our IJIC policy paper. Last year we also contributed to events organised by King’s Fund, Spain’s Geriatric Medicine Society, University of Cork, States of Jersey, University of Barcelona, Third Sector Platform of Catalonia and DIPLOCAT, and WHO Europe’s Forum on Long Term Care.
It was lovely to welcome two IFIC friends for short visits to Scotland this summer. Walter Wodchis, co-lead for IFIC Canada, joined a roundtable with policy, delivery and academic colleagues when he was in Edinburgh for an international conference. Vicky Irons, Chief Officer for Dundee City Health and Social Care Partnership, later reciprocated through a virtual exchange with IFIC Canada. The visit by David Perkins, former IFIC Board member, was unashamedly social as he set off on his retirement odyssey! David represented IFIC when we launched our country hub in 2017 so it was a pleasure to welcome him again as we reached our five year milestone – and to be able to say that IFIC Scotland continues to thrive.
One of our founding members Ian Welsh, CEO of the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE), retired this year. Ian was key to securing a MoU between the ALLIANCE, the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) and IFIC. ALLIANCE support continues through Sara Redmond and Susan Young, chief officers, and Mandy Andrew, Associate Director and IFIC Senior Associate. We were pleased to welcome two new IFIC Senior Associates in Scotland. Chal Chute, Chief Technology Officer for the Digital Health and Care Institute, will be a valuable link to the global digital health and care community. Helen Rainey, programme lead for UWS Masters on leading people centred integrated care, is shaping our work on education and training along with her UWS colleagues.
This year we hosted four virtual Roundtables in collaboration with Health and Social Care Scotland, a national network of senior leaders and managers. The roundtables offer a safe space for policy makers, senior leaders, managers, practitioners and partners from health, social care, housing, Third and independent sectors to explore hot topics in integrated care. Although primarily designed for our Scottish network, the flash reports and recordings are available for all and can be accessed here.
To mark our commitment to the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021 – 2031, we co-designed and co-delivered our Wellbeing in Later Life project with older citizens and in collaboration with the Scottish Older People’s Assembly. Our Scottish virtual learning network on age friendly communities and wellbeing in later life drew inspiration from Age Friendly Ireland and the work of the UK Centre for Ageing Better. Reports from our Co-labs and monthly Conversation Cafes are available here. The outputs from this project were featured at the European Geriatric Medicine Society conference in September and are informing our ongoing collaboration with Age Scotland and the Scottish Older People’s Assembly.
In November we hosted our 49th Integrated Care Matters webinar – this one was a collaboration with Scotland’s Digifest22. To date our webinars have featured around 90 presenters / panelists drawn from 19 countries and have reached delegates from 64 countries. The webinars aim to engage practitioners rather than policymakers and focus on integrated care in practice. You can access the topic resources, recordings and presentations here.
We have just concluded our contribution to IFICs support for Manx Care, provider of health and statutory social care services for the Isle of Man. It has been a great privilege to support Manx Care colleagues on their journey to develop local wellbeing partnerships and integrated services. It was a delight to spend time on island with teams leading new ways of integrated working. We wish them well as they continue their ambitious programme of transformation.
IFIC Scotland coordinates seven of IFICs special interest groups (SIGs) – you can read more about our international collaboration through the SIG updates.
As we end yet another productive year, IFIC Scotland partners look forward to continuing to support IFICs global movement in 2023. We wish you a wonderful festive season and look forward to meeting in Flanders for ICIC23.
Anne Hendry, Director IFIC Scotland
Marie Curran, IFIC Scotland Coordinator
SIG Updates
The SIG kicked off 2022 with a virtual journal club involving authors who had contributed to the Journal of Integrated Care (JICA) Special Issue on intermediate. The special issue features research and viewpoints from SIG members in Scotland, England, the US, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore and Australia. Downloads of the 8 papers and editorial are available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/1476-9018/vol/29/iss/4
As usual, ICIC22 featured several excellent sessions on transitional and intermediate care allowing SIG members to connect in person and online. In September, SIG leads Prof Marco Inzitari and Anne Hendry co-chaired a symposium on Hospital at home models across Europe at the European Geriatric Medicine Society conference. The session featured the Italian Admission Avoidance HaH Model of Turin – a mature service with almost 40 years of experience – and multi-professional frailty teams in England that support older adults experiencing acute decompensation of a frailty syndrome. This service is described in one of the JICA special issue papers. The third example was from the REFiT Barcelona Research Group, Parc Sanitari Pere Virgili and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR) in Barcelona. You can read their recent paper on adapting a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment Hospital at Home model during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (2022), doi: https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2022.11.
In September SIG moderators joined a hybrid roundtable as guests of the British Geriatrics Society. We agreed to focus on three areas in 2023: service evaluation; a position paper on reablement, rehabilitation and recovery; and workforce education, drawing on a new core capabilities framework, You can read more in the update on the Ageing & Frailty SIG.
As usual, ICIC22 featured several excellent sessions on integrated care for older people allowing SIG members to connect in person and online. SIG members continue to be active in webinars and in September a group from Scotland, England, N Ireland, Singapore, Spain, Argentina, Malta and the US came together in a hybrid roundtable hosted by the British Geriatrics Society. Gaston Perman from Buenos Aires reported that the Hospital Italiano has secured funding from the Inter-American Development Bank to develop clinical decision support tools for managing frailty in Latin America. Some SIG members are well placed to support him as they are contributing to a European COST action on education and training. We also heard about neighbourhood community health teams in Singapore, prevention and management of falls in N Ireland care homes, and the Positive Ageing Conference in Malta.
We agreed to focus on developing an evaluation toolkit / guidance on a mixed methods / realist methodology for services that are trying to evidence benefits across both Anticipatory Care and Intermediate care. This will be in partnership with SIG members from Catalonia and informed by their work to develop person centred outcomes for Hospital at Home and Proactive, personalised Anticipatory Care. Watch out for our workshop at ICIC23.
Another SIG focus this year has been engaging with Age Platform Europe and a group of European experts who supported the provincial government of Bizkaia in developing the Bay of Care report on an Empowerment Model for long term care. This resonates with the new European Care strategy that sets out a vision on a rights based, co-production and preventative approach to long-term care. You can hear more about these reports and WHO Europe’s Framework to support countries to achieve an integrated continuum of long term care in our SIG workshop at ICIC23.
ICIC22 featured several excellent sessions on integrated palliative care allowing SIG members to connect in person and online. The Scholl Academic Centre hosted a research seminar in April open to all SIG members. This featured presentations from across the UK and followed on from the previous webinar with Professor John Ellershaw, head of the Palliative Care Unit at the University of Liverpool, and chair of the International Collaborative for Best Care for the Dying Person. The collaborative is a group of leading thinkers, practitioners, and researchers from 24 countries, united by a common goal of improving care for people who are dying and their families. Their shared vision is a world where all people experience a good death as an integral part of their individual life, supported by the very best personalised care. Creating the conditions for integrated care and support is an important enabler to realise this vision and to deliver on the research, education and quality improvement aims of the collaborative. SIG leads had a follow up meeting with the Liverpool team in June to discuss our shared interest and potential for future collaboration.
Anne Mills retires from her role as CEO Hospice Isle of Man at the end of this year. Anne was instrumental in establishing IFICs SIGs on palliative care and compassionate compassionates. We wish Anne well on her retiral but hope we can maintain links with her and with the Hospice and Scholl Academic Centre team. We now invite expressions of interest from SIG members to lead the work of the SIG going forward. If you are interested please contact Marie at: IFICScotland@integratedcarefoundation.org
The SIG held e forums in April and September allowing members to connect and exchange insights on the challenges and opportunities of implementing integrated care in small island systems. This year we were delighted to welcome a representative from Islas Canarias to extend our island community of practice.
To date there has been little focus in the integrated care literature on the specific challenges and emerging solutions for delivering integrated care and population health in remote, rural and island settings. The SIG is collaborating with the Journal of Integrated Care to produce a special issue that will highlight examples of innovation from across the globe and present insights on models of governance, regulation and workforce development that build community resilience, enable transformational change and strengthen remote, rural or island systems.
The closing date is 31 May 2023 so still plenty time to submit a paper. The editorial team will welcome research papers, viewpoints, case studies or reviews on a wide range of topics related to integrated care in remote, rural or island settings.
Articles should be between 3000 and 5000 words including the structured abstract, references, all text, tables, figures and appendices. Please circulate the call through your island policy, academic and practice networks.
ICIC22 featured several excellent sessions on integrated palliative care allowing SIG members to connect in person and online. The Scholl Academic Centre hosted a research seminar in April open to all SIG members. This featured presentations from across the UK and followed on from the previous webinar with Professor John Ellershaw, head of the Palliative Care Unit at the University of Liverpool, and chair of the International Collaborative for Best Care for the Dying Person. The collaborative is a group of leading thinkers, practitioners, and researchers from 24 countries, united by a common goal of improving care for people who are dying and their families. Their shared vision is a world where all people experience a good death as an integral part of their individual life, supported by the very best personalised care. Creating the conditions for integrated care and support is an important enabler to realise this vision and to deliver on the research, education and quality improvement aims of the collaborative. SIG leads had a follow up meeting with the Liverpool team in June to discuss our shared interest and potential for future collaboration.
Anne Mills retires from her role as CEO Hospice Isle of Man at the end of this year. Anne was instrumental in establishing IFICs SIGs on palliative care and compassionate compassionates. We wish Anne well on her retiral but hope we can maintain links with her and with the Hospice and Scholl Academic Centre team. We now invite expressions of interest from SIG members to lead the work of the SIG going forward. If you are interested please contact Marie at: IFICScotland@integratedcarefoundation.org