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JOINT FUTURE AGENDA: SHORT LIFE WORKING GROUP ON JOINT PREMISES DEVELOPMENT IN PRIMARY AND COMMUNITY CARE: FINAL REPORT
PART 1 - INTRODUCTION
1. Background
1.1 The shape of joint community care services is still under active discussion in most areas of Scotland. Joint premises are certain to play a key role in delivering customer focused strategies for joint services that demonstrate best value. Some local partnerships anticipating the joint working agenda have taken the initiative to progress a small number of joint premises developments.
1.2 During the course of 2002, these local partnerships, citing the effort and complexity involved with getting existing schemes off the ground, approached the Joint Future Unit seeking a more streamlined approach to delivery of joint premises developments.
1.3 Acknowledging the complexity of the existing statutory, regulatory and commercial environment for joint premises development, the Joint Future Unit convened the Short Life Working Group on Joint Premises Development in Community Care (SLWG) in October 2002 to consider the relevant issues. The remit of the SLWG on Joint Premises and its membership (including those from the joint premises network that also contributed) is set out in Appendix 1.
2. Short Life Working Group - Remit and Membership
2.1 The SLWG was constituted on a joint basis with contributions from the Health Department, NHS Scotland and COSLA. Our group has drawn heavily on the inclusion and advice of the joint premises network of NHS and Local Authority estate managers who joined us midway through our deliberations.
2.2 The aim of our report is to identify and promote solutions to progress joint premises development in primary and community care in the short to medium term. In addition, we investigated various models of delivery to mainstream implementation of our recommendations in the longer term.
3. Short Life Working Group - Approach
3.1 The SLWG considered measures to facilitate joint premises development through joint strategic planning and delivery at a local level putting the user at the centre of future proposals.
3.2 The group saw this process in terms of the following 3 distinct phases of development:
(1) Streamlining existing development processes;
(2) Widening the application of joint premises development; and
(3) Developing integrated models of delivery to support the inclusion of joint premises in the mainstream activities of local partners.
3.3 Our overall aim in this report is to produce recommendations that encourage this developmental process. In doing so, we have attempted to build on the earlier work of the Primary Care Premises Modernisation Group (2001) but focusing more directly on the issues affecting joint working between NHS bodies and Local Authorities. An initial objective was to identify the lessons to be learned from the limited range of initiatives successfully completed to date, in order to understand where existing processes may be streamlined and identify local solutions that are suitable for replication.
3.4 A second objective was to consider the means by which the wider application of joint premises activity should be encouraged. The SLWG favoured the development of a generic tool-kit for local partners to facilitate the rapid transfer of knowledge and skills between practitioners to deliver on a national scale the anticipated growth in joint services envisaged under the Joint Future Agenda. The tool-kit, which is currently being developed, will draw on the best aspects of promising practice identified from recently completed initiatives.
3.5 A third objective was to consider how joint premises development could be embedded in the mainstream activities of local partners. The group examined alternative models for delivering joint premises development with a view to identifying their appropriateness and any additional action necessary to make them available to local partners.
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