NAVCA and NHSE/I invite you to contribute your thinking on the current paper, "Integrating Care: Next steps to building stong and effective integrated care systems.

The paper published by NHSE/I builds on previous work and sets out NHS ambitions for greater collaboration between partners, including the VCS, in health and care systems and for health and care to be joined up locally around people’s needs.

Many of the proposals will impact how health and care structures engage and collaborate with local VCSEs. Some of the key changes include:

stronger partnerships in local places between NHS, local councils and others;
formal collaborative arrangements for provider organisations that allow them to operate at scale; and
system-wide strategic commissioning with a focus on population health.

The paper also puts forward two specific proposals for putting Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) on a statutory footing. These are:

Option One: a statutory committee model with an accountable officer that binds together current statutory organisations.
Option Two: a statutory corporate NHS body model that additionally brings CCG statutory functions into the ICS (NHS preferred option)

The key questions we will be considering at these events will include:

Does giving ICSs a statutory footing from 2022, alongside other legislative proposals, provide the right foundation for the NHS over the next decade?
Does Option Two offer a model that provides greater incentive for collaboration alongside clarity of accountability across systems, to Parliament and, most importantly, to patients?
Other than mandatory participation of NHS bodies and local authorities, is membership sufficiently permissive to allow systems to shape their own governance arrangements to best suit their populations needs?
Subject to appropriate safeguards and where appropriate, should services currently commissioned by NHSE be either transferred or delegated to ICS bodies?

NAVCA and NHSE/I: ICS developments (Meeting Two)