IFIC is providing expert support to a new European project aimed at supporting policy-makers and practitioners to foster an interest in integrated community care.
TransForm, The Transnational Forum on Integrated Community Care, was set up last year as part of a three-year project. It is an initiative funded by Network of European Foundations (NEF) and supported by the International Foundation for Integrated Care.
TransForm seeks to pull together evidence and analysis of promising practice in integrated community care, as well as learning from their experiences and impact, the first stage to be presented at a conference later this year.
What is integrated community care?
Integrated community care is an approach that seeks to empower and engage people as co-producers of care within inter-sectoral and inter-professional partnerships. The purpose is to improve quality of care and quality of life to vulnerable individuals and communities. TransForm will identify promising practices using core characteristics:
- Care delivery that involves cross-sectoral and inter-professional partnerships – bringing together formal and informal care actors – between health, social care and other sectors for a defined community or neighbourhood; and
- Care delivery that seeks to care for people living in the home environment with care bring delivered primarily in non-institutional or non-residential settings. This may however include care that is provided in institutional or residential settings (e.g. clinics, hospitals, nursing homes) when case studies are moving towards a hybrid model and are also offering ambulant (outreach) services to the local community; and
- Care delivery that engages and empowers people in those local communities as co-producers of their health, taking an assets-based approach to community health development. This means promising practices in integrated community care must be seen to be promoting the role of the informal care sector and enabling the participation and engagement of communities in both care delivery and decision-making.
Nick Goodwin, IFIC’s Chief Executive Officer, said:
“TransForm was initiated in June 2017 as a three-year project. In the first stages, IFIC has been conducting a mapping exercise from published and unpublished sources to collate ‘promising practices’ – case studies that have developed innovative approaches to integrated community care in Europe and beyond. A sub-set of these promising practices will be chosen for further case study investigation.
“A key objective of the project is to hold a series of conferences. The first conference will be hosted in Hamburg, Germany, on 24-26 September 2018. Grounded in both evidence and practical experience, this conference seeks to make the compelling case for investment in integrated community care as a policy priority to support effective, high-quality and sustainable care. The conference will include expert speakers, in-depth assessment of international case examples; and site visits to local innovations.”