A Healthier Manchester

The commissioning and delivery of health and social care services in Manchester are arranged into three key pillars which are mutually dependent:

• A single commissioning function - "ensuring the efficient commissioning of health and care services on a city wide basis with a single line of accountability for the delivery of services. This approach will integrate spending across health and social care on high cost/high risk cohort, reducing duplication of service delivery and fragmentation of care". This is Manchester Health and Care Commissioning.
• Local Care Organisation - a single organisation or partnership "delivering integrated and accessible out of hospital services through community based health, primary and social care services within neighbourhoods. Through the combining of resources residents will get integrated services, resulting in improved outcomes (holistic needs addressed) at reduced cost"
• Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust - "delivering cost efficiencies and strengthened clinical services, with consistent and complementary arrangements for the delivery of acute services achieving a fully aligned hospital model for the City."

A diagram of this plan can be found below along with the full Locality Plan:

More information can be found on the Healthier Manchester website - https://healthiermanchester.org/

Regular bulletins are produced to give updates on the Locality Plan and they are now sent directly by email. To subscribe, you can email [email protected] or call 0161 765 4004. 


Improving health and wellbeing in Greater Manchester  
This resources pack is one of a series produced for all those working in and with local health and care systems across England. It was commissioned by Age UK on behalf of the VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance and Healthwatch. The pack brings together a range of national and local information and data to build a shared understanding about the local population and the communities in which they live, the wider local context affecting health and wellbeing, and specific aspects related to the delivery of local health and care services. 



Manchester Health Who's Who
For everyone who would like help with navigating the Manchester health and care system, there is a who's who to help. Thanks to MHCC for sharing this with us. 


Primary Care Networks
The Primary Care Networks are part of the NHS Long Term Plan and their aim is to connect general practices locally so they can work together. They will cover a local population of around 30,000 to 50,000 patients. This generally already happens in Manchester with the GP Federations and the Neighbourhood Partnerships that work alongside the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, but Primary Care Networks put a more formal structure around this way of working.

Each Network will have a Clinical Director and they will receive specific funding for social prescribing link workers or community pharmacists. A plan has been written locally to outline how this will work (particularly in Manchester where we already have a Be Well social prescribing scheme that is delivered by Greater Manchester Mental Health in North Manchester and Big Life Group in South and Central Manchester).

The plan requires local partners to look at how the arrival of new social prescribing link workers within the Primary Care Networks will avoid duplication, be embedded in existing schemes, be locally recruited, and provide sufficient commitment and support for local VCSE sector organisations.

Developing Neighbourhoods 
In each of the 12 neighbourhoods in Manchester, there is a Health Development Co-ordinator (HDC) whose role is to support statutory health and social care services in joint work with neighbourhood services. The list of projects they are involved in is far too long to cover here but includes joint planning meetings, workshops, training and consultation forums.