June saw us celebrate Carers Week up and down the country, highlighting the importance of unpaid carers, with this year’s theme being ‘Making Caring Visible and Valued’.

At their June meeting, our Integration Joint Board (IJB) received an update on how we continue to implement our Carers Strategies and support carers across Glasgow with our partners through the Glasgow City Carers Partnership (GCCP).

In our July edition of our Partnership Matters Briefing, we feature more of this work and the positive outcomes that have been achieved through the GCCP, particularly over the course of the year during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Whilst our HSCP staff and partners quickly adapted to new and innovative ways of working to keep carers supported, it’s abundantly clear that carers have continued to play a vital role in us supporting the health and social care needs of our city.

One of the constants in delivering our services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been change itself, and over the past year we’ve had to adapt with new ways of working to keep our patients, service users, carers and their families supported. Our ICT capability has been a big part of this, and it’s enabled us to provide support remotely and safely. There’s also been many examples of us doing more practical but just as important things innovatively and creatively, which have really mattered to the people who we support and have had a positive impact on them. Take the time to read our feature on our Wallacewell Children’s House, and how our HSCP staff have been thinking outside of the box to ensure that the children and young people living there continue to thrive and feel at home during the pandemic.

Although over the course of the pandemic there’s been a number of times when we’ve had to stop and restart our services, we’ve been able to continue some project work, including the North East Hub (the new Parkhead Health and Care Centre). As part of this project, the West Scotland Helping Hands Initiative will be taking place in the North East / Parkhead area of Glasgow to support local community projects or groups with materials and labour to upgrade existing community resource premises. Applications are now open until 31 August, and more information is available on our HSCP’s website. I’d appreciate it if HSCP staff or partners who work with local organisations in the area raise awareness of the initiative with them.

We also feature in this month’s briefing our updated HSCP Demographics Profile 2021, which includes a range of population information that we use as a reference tool to help us plan and deliver our services. Over the years our HSCP staff and partners have found it useful, so we thought we would share it more widely.

Recent news articles available on our HSCP’s website continue to be included in our briefing, too, as well as upcoming events and meetings. You can read them by selecting their relevant link.

An update on how we continue to respond to and manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our health and social care services is also provided. Gordon Bryan, our Head of Care Services, is featured in our Senior Management Team video update.

I hope that we’ve all felt a bit more of normality returning to our lives over the past month, with us moving to Level 2 in June and now Level 0 from last week and being able to meet up with more family and friends within our homes and other indoor settings such as cafes and restaurants.

Although we’re seeing the positive impact of the COVID-19 vaccination programme in helping to prevent serious illness, cases still remain high. And as we’ve seen, new variants can happen very quickly and impact on the gains that we’ve made to suppress the virus. It’s so important that we continue to keep our guard up and keep ourselves and others safe by taking opportunities to get vaccinated, by participating in testing and by following government and public health guidelines and restrictions, particularly around physical distancing, hygiene and the wearing of face coverings.

Within our HSCP, our Executive Group, consisting of our most senior managers across the HSCP, continues to meet every week to monitor and respond to the pandemic on our services. Our Accommodation, Social Distancing and Recovery Group also continues to regularly meet to ensure that our service delivery arrangements and the use of our buildings are done in a planned and co-ordinated way, meet the needs of our business and are compliant with current government and public health guidelines on COVID-19. The health and safety of our patients, service users, staff and visitors to our buildings remains paramount.

More importantly, though, it’s coming down to each and everyone one of us playing our part to keep ourselves and others safe.

With summer fully upon us now, I hope that you’ve been able to enjoy a break, if not now, then sometime over the next couple months. It’s especially important that our HSCP staff and partners who have been working day-in and day-out throughout the pandemic take a break for themselves and to re-charge. Myself and our HSCP’s Senior Management Team remain thankful and grateful for all of your support and dedication in continuing to support the health and social care needs of our city.

Kind regards,

Susanne