Welcome to the first issue of Partnership Matters for the year ahead. It’s hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of February, and the holiday season is well behind us. I hope you managed to have an enjoyable time with family and friends, and that our health and social care staff and partners had a well-earned break at some point.

I’d also like to express my gratitude to staff and partners who were working over the holidays to deliver essential services to our city’s most vulnerable patients and service users, and to all who continue to go above and beyond to provide support whilst we’ve been facing winter pressures impacting our health and social care system over the months. We couldn’t do it without you – thank you for everything that you do on a day-to-day basis.

As you’ll be aware from the news over the past months, financial challenges remain for health and social care services and public services in general, and we’ve had a number of significant pressures within our HSCP that will continue to have an impact on the delivery of our services. We’ll soon get confirmation of what our Integration Joint Board’s/Health and Social Care Partnership’s (IJB/HSCP) budget contributions will be from our partner organisations, Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, for the planning and delivery of our services over the next financial year, 2024 to 2025. We’re clear about the challenges and pressures that we’re facing and our aspirations for our services, but at the same time we’re going to need to be realistic about what can be delivered within the funding that’ll be available.

Although we don’t know our exact budget for 2024 to 2025 yet, we do know that it’ll be the most significant budget challenge that we’ve seen since the start of our IJB, and this means that difficult choices will need to be made to agree on areas where savings can be made to meet funding gaps. We’ve been considering a range of possibilities for savings for our IJB to discuss and agree at their meeting on 20 March. I want to assure you that while difficult choices will need to be made, we’re working really hard to continue to deliver the critical services that our patients, service users, carers and their families rely on. I’m certain, though, that it’ll be the dedication, person-centred care and resilience of our staff that will keep our city supported the best that we can with the funding that’ll be available to us. We remain in a more strengthened position because of them.

Reports on our budget for the next financial year and the medium-term financial outlook will be available on our HSCP’s website as part of the March meeting papers when they are published in advance of the IJB’s meeting.

In this issue of Partnership Matters we feature articles on:

• a video that we’ve produced with partners, community organisations and people who we support to help raise awareness and understanding about our HSCP’s Maximising Independence approach
• work we’ve been doing to implement a pilot Safer Drug Consumption Facility (SDCF) that will be the first of its kind in the UK, and you can watch a video about it
• a strategic partnership we’ve launched with the University of Strathclyde, which will inform best practice and innovation in the health and social care sector in our city around four areas of shared interests
• an update on the development of our new health and social care hub at Parkhead in North East Glasgow
• our Red Bag scheme to support care home residents attending and returning from hospital, which works as a visual prompt to provide a central location for the transfer of information, appropriate medication, belongings and preferences of residents

We also continue to include links to more news articles that have been published on our HSCP’s website, as well as links to upcoming meetings and events. You can keep up to date on what’s happening across our HSCP with partners by following us on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, too. If you have something you’d like to feature in Partnership Matters, feel free to email us at gchscp_communications@glasgow.gov.uk. 

Susanne