Greater Manchester ICP Strategy
Greater Manchester’s Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) Strategy sets out how we will work together to improve the health of our city-region’s people through the Greater Manchester ICP.
It outlines our priorities (our ‘missions’) which are to:
- Strengthen our communities
- Help people get into – and stay in – good work
- Recover core NHS and care services
- Help people stay well and detect illness earlier
- Support our workforce and our carers
- Achieve financial sustainability
It follows on from our first strategy ‘Taking Charge’ Together, published in 2015 when Greater Manchester was granted the historic devolution deal and funding for the city-region’s health and care system.
Through ‘Taking Charge’ we established our model of integrated neighbourhood and place-based working. We established strong provider collaborations across secondary, primary, mental health and social care. We established an expansive strategic partnership with the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector pioneering new approaches to community-led care and support. We progressed a system-wide Population Health Plan alongside scaled improvements and innovation in mental health access and provision, extended access in primary care and significant improvements in social care quality. Finally, we established a nationally leading model to connect the health and care system with academic and industry partners in the pursuit, discovery and spread of innovation.
While good progress has been made, more still needs to be done. Too many people living in Greater Manchester still spend far too much of their lives in poor health, and inequalities remain.
Our shared vision
“We want Greater Manchester to be a place where everyone can live a good life, growing up, getting on and growing old in a greener, fairer more prosperous city region.”
What does this mean?
We want a Greater Manchester where everyone:
These are the outcomes we want to achieve for everyone in Greater Manchester, and no one outcome can be achieved without the others.
To achieve these outcomes, we want to:
- Ensure our children and young people have a good start in life
- Help people, families and communities feel more confident in managing their own health
- Support good work and employment and ensure we have a sustainable workforce
- Play a full part in tackling poverty and long-standing inequalities
- Make continuous improvements in access, quality and experience – and reduce unwarranted variation
- Use technology and innovation to improve care for all
- Ensure that all our people and services recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as effectively and fairly as possible
- Help to secure a greener Greater Manchester with places that support healthy, active lives
The challenges
Greater Manchester has some of the lowest life expectancy in England, with differences between the most and least deprived areas of 9.5 years for men and 7.7 years for women.
Further differences exist between communities according to race and ethnicity, gender, disabilities, poverty and social exclusion, sexuality and age, as shown through a range of external analyses. This, coupled with in
creasing demand and a workforce crisis, is putting strain on our services.
Residents have told us they have real concerns about funding and staffing levels, difficulties in accessing appointments, and waiting times for hospital care.
Our strategy is built on three core elements that outline how we respond to these challenges:
- Embedding the Greater Manchester model for health
- Acting on our missions
- Monitoring our progress
Embedding the Greater Manchester Model for Health
This is how we will work together, with our communities, to create the conditions for good lives, prevent poor health and ensure support is available before crises occur and to provide consistent and high-quality care wherever it is accessed. This is a social model for health, rather than a predominantly medical one, so focuses on the role of people and communities as well as health and care services.
The missions
There are 6 priorities we believe will help us with the biggest challenges currently faced by communities and the pressures we have on the system. We are calling these our missions.
Mission 1: Strengthening our communities
We will help people, families and communities feel more confident in managing their own health. We will act on this with a range of programmes, including working across Greater Manchester to support communities through social prescribing, closer working with the VCSE and co-ordinated approaches for those experiencing multiple disadvantage.
Mission 2: Helping people get into – and stay in – good work
We will support wider social and economic benefits from NHS investment by expanding our Work and Health programmes, working with employers on employee wellbeing through the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter, and developing social value through a network of anchor institutions.
Mission 3: Recovering core NHS and care services
We will work to improve ambulance response and A&E waiting times, reduce elective long waits and cancer backlogs, improve access to primary care services and core mental health services, improve quality and reduce unwarranted variation.
Mission 4: Helping people stay well and detecting illness earlier
We will collaborate to reduce smoking rates, increase physical activity, tackle obesity and alcohol dependency. We want to do more to identify and treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and other conditions which are risk factors for poor health and early. We will embed a comprehensive approach to reducing health inequalities.
Mission 5: Supporting our workforce and our carers
We will promote integration, better partnership working and good employment practices, as well as supporting our workforce to be well and addressing inequalities in the workplace. We want more people choosing health and care as a career and feeling supported to develop and stay in the sector. We will consistently identify and support Greater Manchester’s unwaged carers.
Mission 6: Achieving financial sustainability
Financial sustainability – ‘living within our means’ – requires an initial focus on financial recovery to achieve a balanced position. We will confirm, quantify and tackle the main reasons for financial challenges in Greater Manchester, implementing a system wide programme of cost improvement, productivity, demand reduction and service transformation.
Monitoring our progress
We are clear about the progress we intend to make and are committed to demonstrating it. Our strategy sets out progress measures against our outcomes and missions, which focus on helping people to live good lives, improved health and wellbeing, better standards of care and support and greater integration of services.
Read the strategy
We want our strategy to be accessible to everyone and so have produced it in different formats and lengths. Choose from the options that suit you best below.
If we haven’t provided it in a format you need, please contact us and we will do our best to support you.
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How have we developed the strategy?
This strategy was being developed from lots of research, feedback and expert knowledge. Find out more about what influenced the strategy on the links below.
What existing and developing plans are telling us
There are plans at all levels which focus on the needs of the places the organisations serve, including the health of the population. We have reviewed these to look for priorities, plans and common themes.
This includes reviewing the aims and progress from the previous Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership 5 year strategy, Taking Charge, the plans and strategies from the 10 boroughs and cities across Greater Manchester and from the big health and care themes, for example, public health, the green agenda, and the GM People and Culture Strategy.
What the evidence and data is telling us
Improvements were made in health behaviours and outcomes but COVID-19 impacted these. For example, a recent academic study by Manchester University showed that health devolution in GM had increased life expectancy for many local residents.
The data also tells us that:
- People in GM are less healthy than other parts of the country
- GM people experience long-standing inequalities in all aspects of life, which affect their health.
- Health also affects productivity.
We continue to study the latest evidence to help us develop the priorities and plans and we know that leadership, relationships and trust are all vital for improvements.
What communities and local residents are telling us
We are committed to continuous engagement with people and communities to inform the priorities of our five-year plan and to shape the future of health and care.
To support the development of the strategy, since May 2022 we have been delivering the Big Conversation, an ongoing cycle of engagement working with people, communities and the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector to find out what is important to people with regards to their health and wellbeing.
Find out more about the Big Conversation
Responding to resident feedback
Feedback highlighted overwhelming support for the vision and commitments of the strategy. Inequalities and access to the right level of care were the two things respondents agreed with most.
In particular, respondents expressed overwhelming support for prevention strategies and reduction of health inequalities experienced by people in Greater Manchester with particular emphasis on the wider determinants of health including poverty and cost of living. They also expressed strong views about the need to education the public and enable people to take more control and responsibility for health and care choices.
Respondents also felt strongly about the commitment to enable people to access the right level of care where and when they need it. This included access to primary care, particularly GPs and dentists, mental health (with a focus on children and young people), a reduction in waiting lists and timely diagnostics and treatment.
Concerns
However, respondents did have concerns regarding the commitment (as described at that point in time) to ‘realise the opportunities from digital technology’ citing that there had been historical difficulties with the use of technology in health and care. There was also concern around services running effectively if face to face is replaced and the risk of excluding service users who are non-digital.
Responding to feedback
The themes highlighted above have been supported by other subsequent engagement. The most recent engagement draft of the ICP strategy, on which comments have recently been analysed includes access to care as key shared outcome (the GM we want to see) and inequalities is a fundamental aspect of the way we will work together – ‘Understand and take action to address inequalities in everything we do’. Prevention and early detection is one of the missions/priorities.
The challenges highlighted above are ones that are being addressed as the detail of the strategy is developed.
All insight gathered from the above was used develop the final 5-year strategy. Find out more about how the feedback shaped and influenced the strategy by visiting the Engagement on the 5 year strategy page.
What the staff and colleagues are telling us
Big Conversation
Citizens and staff have been engaged in the development of the draft strategy via the Big Conversation, an engagement project to involve staff and the public in shaping our plans.
349 staff across the ICP gave their comments on the vision and commitments of the five year plan as part of Big Conversation phase 1 – an online survey. Citizens also gave their views (1021) and some staff chose to respond as citizens.
Staff represented a range of organisations including local authority, acute, primary and social care and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.
Positive feedback
Feedback from staff highlighted overwhelming support for the vision and commitments of the strategy. Inequalities and access to the right level of care were the two things respondents agreed with most.
In particular, staff expressed overwhelming support for prevention strategies and reduction of health inequalities experienced by people in Greater Manchester with particular emphasis on the wider determinants of health including poverty and cost of living. They also expressed strong views about the need to education the public and enable people to take more control and responsibility for health and care choices.
Staff also felt strongly about the commitment to enable people to access the right level of care where and when they need it. This included access to primary care, particularly GPs and dentists, mental health (with a focus on children and young people), a reduction in waiting lists and timely diagnostics and treatment.
Concerns
However, staff did have concerns regarding the commitment (as described at that point in time) to ‘realise the opportunities from digital technology’ citing that there had been historical difficulties with the use of technology in health and care. There was also concern around services running effectively if face to face is replaced and the risk of excluding service users who are non-digital.
Developing a paid and volunteer workforce for the future received the second highest number of concerns from staff. There were numerous comments from staff that this should not replace the paid workforce and had the potential to overwhelm carers. Respondents wanted to see more investment in workforce recruitment and development.
Other concerns from staff related to the need to continue to engage with the workforce, to set realistic goals and measurable outcomes with many commenting on how we will know if the strategy is working.
Responding to staff feedback
The themes highlighted above have been supported by other subsequent engagement.
Find out more about what staff said and how this shaped the final draft of the strategy by visiting the Staff engagement on the 5 year strategy page.
How will we deliver the strategy?
We have a Joint Forward Plan that explains what actions we will take to deliver the strategy and achieve our missions.
Read the Joint Forward Plan Read the Joint Forward Plan