Since April 2016, responsibility for Greater Manchester’s (GM’s) £6 billion Health and Social Care (H&SC) budget has been devolved to the region. The devolution agreement was secured in a Memorandum of Understanding between the GM local authorities, the GM association of CCGs, and NHS England
The Strategic Partnership Board formally oversees it and Alex Whinnom, Chief Executive of GMCVO, is a member of the 37-person board. Jon Rouse, who has previously worked in the Department of Health and held a non-executive role at Homelessness International, is the new Chief Officer of the devolved system.
The GM H&SC Partnership is aiming to find £2 billion in savings by 2020, which it hopes to achieve through four key ‘bubbles’ of activity:
- A radical upgrade in population health
- Transforming care in localities
- Standardising hospital and acute care
- Standardising clinical support and back office services.
This will be delivered through a mixture of locality level and GM level services, depending on the type of service required. Each borough of GM has published a Locality Plan, setting out how they intend to become financially sustainable by 2020.
The VCSE sector’s role is likely to be around areas 1 and 2: improving population health, and transforming care in localities.
At a GM level, the VCSE Devolution Reference Group, who are a partner to the GM H&SC Partnership, have been meeting with key individuals to discuss how the VCSE sector can broadly fit in with the system. They have also begun developing GM wide policy proposals on co-design and co-production, on behalf of the GM H&SC Partnership.
At a locality level, VCSE inclusion in plans varies significantly. VSNW has been interviewing sector leads and we will be publishing a short briefing on VCSE H&SC inclusion by borough in GM.
Useful links
GM H&SC partnership - http://www.gmhsc.org.uk/
The H&SC devolution Memorandum of Understanding
Devolving Health and Social Care in GM: A roundtable summary