PRACTICE
NICE takes on care challenge
One of the key changes in spring’s reforms to health and social care was the new status and remit of NICE. Jane Silvester explains how the organisation will deliver its new responsibility
to ‘care’, replacing the word ‘clinical’, refl ects the expansion of the organisation’s remit to produce guidance and quality standards for social care for the fi rst time. At the same time, NICE also published its fi rst social care quality standards on Supporting People to Live Well with Dementia and Health and Wellbeing of Looked-after Children and Young People. This new chapter for NICE refl ects the
I
growing recognition that, to improve the quality of care and to ensure value for money, there has to be better integration of health and social care. We believe we are well placed to support this because we already publish evidence-based guidance and quality standards for improving health and preventing disease and treating healthcare conditions. The addition of social care extends our work to areas such as prevention, early intervention, reablement and long-term care and support for adults, children and young people. NICE’s new remit will help to ensure that people receive good care, support and advice at whichever point they are in the health and social care system. It also means the social care sector will have access to evidence-based guidance to improve the quality of services they provide.
20 SOCIALWORKMATTERS JULY13
n April, NICE became the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. The name change, to include reference
Working with social care To prepare the ground for its new remit, NICE has been engaging with several social care organisations and professional associations to gain an understanding of the needs of services users, clients, carers and practitioners and how the system works. The NICE Collaborating Centre for Social
NICE’s social care quality
standards are concise sets of statements designed to drive priority quality improvements
Care (NCCSC) has also been established. This is a consortium of organisations led by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) which has been commissioned by NICE to develop social care guidance for adults and children and young people. The centre will work with people who use care, their families and friends, care providers and commissioners to develop the guidance, which NICE will then use as a basis for devising quality standards. The NCCSC will also work to ensure that the people who commission, provide and use care are aware of the guidance and the quality standards and are supported to put them into practice. As well as the two social care quality standards NICE has published, several other topics for social care quality standards were referred by the Department for Health (DH) in 2012. Some of these topics already have NICE guidance published but there are others that will need new guidance, which the NCCSC will develop in the months ahead (See Topics for development).
Quality standards NICE’s social care quality standards are concise sets of
statements designed to drive priority quality improvements within a particular area of care. They are not a new set of targets for performance management but are intended to complement the existing regulatory framework of CQC Essential Standards and National Minimum Standards, helping social care to build on the existing framework and go one step further by providing practical tools to deliver good quality care.
NICE quality standards enable: ■ Health and social care practitioners to make
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22