As Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), we’re always keen to improve the ways that we communicate and engage with you – whether you’re being supported by us, working for us or working in partnership with us.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been using different technologies such as Microsoft Teams, Attend Anywhere, websites and social media to maintain connections and support as we couldn’t use ways that we normally did pre-pandemic. This isn’t to say that these technologies that are now readily available to us are a replacement. They’re additional and can help us to continue to better understand and meet the health and social care needs of our city. Building on this, we thought we’d kick off this issue of our Partnership Matters Briefing with a video.

Back in March we launched our HSCP’s new Complex Needs Service – a highly personalised, holistic and wrap-around service for people presenting with multiple and complex health and social care needs such as homelessness, addictions and mental health. Since the launch, we’ve put together a video of our staff telling the story of the new service, how it came about and how it’s working to make a difference for the people of Glasgow. At the heart of the video is Neil, a service user who shares his lived experience and how he’s being supported through his complex needs. The video captures, in their own words, what health and social care integration is about and how together we’re making a real difference to people’s lives. The video is just under 10 minutes, and I encourage you to take the time to watch it.

Person-centred care and support continues in our briefing with features on Trauma Informed Training that we’re rolling out with staff; work we’re doing around Power of Attorney (POA) to raise awareness of it and our Red Bag Scheme for care/residential home residents attending and returning from hospital. We include links to recent news articles published on our website, too.

Since our last Partnership Matters Briefing in April, we’ve been taking big steps in returning to a greater sense of normality. The last of the COVID-19 legal restrictions have been lifted, the rules around testing and self-isolation have been changed and guidance for health and social care settings has been updated. This reflects where we’re at in the pandemic. Although there have been some reported increases recently, compared to early Spring we’ve seen less COVID-19 infections in the community across Scotland, less patients receiving treatment and care in our hospitals and less service users in our care homes with COVID-19. As I’ve said a number of times, the vaccines, treatments, protection measures and all of our individual and collective efforts have got us to this point.

We’ve also included with the Partnership Matters Briefing an update on how we’ve continued to respond to and manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on HSCP services in our regular COVID-19 Briefing, and Robin Wallace, our Head of Service for Residential and Day Care Services for Older People, features in our Senior Management Team video. Given the current circumstances for COVID-19 is very different nationally and locally from where we’ve been, we’ll be pausing the COVID-19 briefing after this one. If circumstances change significantly then we’ll resume it.

However, it’s still important to remember that the virus is still with us and I’d encourage you to continue to keep yourself and others safe by using ‘COVID sense’. That ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ that we’ve often talked about at different points in the pandemic seems to be more within our reach this time around, and we all have a part to play in getting us there.

As Summer approaches I truly hope that our staff and partners supporting our health and social care efforts throughout the pandemic get the chance to enjoy a break. I can’t express enough the thanks and gratitude of myself and our HSCP’s Senior Management Team for all your ‘above and beyond’ efforts and your commitment in ensuring that the health and social care needs of our city remain a priority. Thank you.

Susanne