Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) is a partnership between Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The HSCP jointly plans and delivers all of Glasgow’s community health and social care services. Glasgow City’s Integration Joint Board,  or IJB as we call it, is a separate legal body that directs our HSCP to deliver community health and social care services in line with its Strategic Plan. The IJB is made up of voting and non-voting members. You can find out more about the IJB on our HSCP’s website.

Over the summer, some new IJB Members were appointed. To help the new IJB members gain a greater understanding of all the work we do, we organised some visits to frontline services for them and also invited existing IJB Members to come along. This article is the first in a series, spotlighting IJB Members and their visits to some of our services.

The first IJB Member we’re focussing on is Graham Haddock, OBE, and his visit to the Glasgow Intensive Family Support Service.

Graham Haddock

Graham worked as a Consultant Neonatal and Paediatric Surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow until December 2019, when he retired from clinical practice. Graham joined the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board as a Non-Executive member in May 2023, and was asked to join Glasgow City’s IJB as a Health Board voting member. Graham is also a volunteer member of the Children’s Hearing System in Scotland.

Graham has visited six HSCP services so far:

• Glasgow Intensive Family Support Service (GIFSS)
• Rehabilitation team and District Nursing team based at North West Centre for Health and Care
• Community Respiratory Team at Possilpark Health Centre
• North West Recovery Community WINGS in Possilpark
• Archway Glasgow – a specialist service caring for people who have been raped or sexually assaulted
• Riddrie Day Centre for people with learning disabilities

He also has a visit planned to North East Parkhead Hub.

We caught up with Graham to find out more about how the visits went, especially the visit to GIFSS. Graham advised that while he’d worked in a hospital setting and was well aware of issues affecting acute (hospital) settings, joining the IJB had been a fascinating but steep learning curve for him.

Graham said: “As an IJB Member, I’m making decisions about resources, proposals and strategy so I was really keen to find out more about all the different services the HSCP provide. Every single visit has been an eye opener in so many different respects. The breadth and depth of services that are offered by Glasgow City HSCP is frankly astonishing. The passion that the staff have for their own particular area is equally astonishing and the quality of each of the services delivered seems to be extremely high and that was no more evident than at the GIFSS”.

At the GIFSS visit, Graham not only got to meet with the wider team but was also able to observe group discussions on two families and hear about the work being undertaken, both by the families and the team, to support them. IJB Members were delighted to be given the chance to meet three families that have had the support of GIFSS.

Graham advised that all three of the IJB visitors felt quite emotional when listening to these families, and while all of the visits were astonishingly informative, for him due to his background working with children and young people, he found it really powerful.

Graham also continued, “Given my experience in the children’s panel, I could see that for different reasons these children may have ended up going down the path of ending up before a Children’s Panel however thanks to the support of GIFSS, the family units were able to stay together and support each other and that was quite impactful for me. I’ve been soaking up as much information as I can during these visits and moving forward it will empower me to have a better understanding of all the different services we deliver and be of great assistance to me in my role as a voting member of the IJB”.

Lastly, Graham wanted to express how grateful he was to everyone involved in organising these visits and for the warm welcome he received on every single visit and the level of engagement from staff who took time to share their experience and knowledge with him.

Glasgow Intensive Family Support Service (GIFSS)

Graham and two other IJB Members visited GIFSS at the end of September.

GIFSS is a groundbreaking service, delivered in partnership between our HSCP and four providers:  

• Aberlour
• Action for Children
• Includem
• Right There

There’s a joint governance approach to the development and delivery of the service, and this includes a joint approach to sharing resources, finance, training and knowledge. This enables the team to do ‘the right thing’ for families, providing a wrap-around service in a flexible way that suits individual families.

While the service is for young people aged 12 or over who may be at risk of coming into care, GIFSS work with the whole family and any supports already in their local community. They believe families should be at the centre of all decision making. While the team acknowledge there are issues within the family, they focus on the strengths and assets of young people and their families (including extended family). They then work with the family to build and amplify these strengths giving them the tools they need to deal with issues going forward and to help the family remain together. This Strength Based Intervention also takes account of the aims and goals of the family.

Since 2021:

• 452 families have been supported by GIFSS 
• 86% of young people referred to GIFSS were supported to remain within a family environment that they valued
• 94% of families rated that they had made progress with the support of GIFSS   

showing that this innovative approach is proving successful.

But the innovation doesn’t just end there. GIFSS also developed a coaching framework to support their staff, and they hold regular group supervisions sessions. Each session focuses on four families and the staff coach each other alongside support from social workers and team leaders from the partner organisations. This helps ensure that staff are following the framework of GIFSS, creating self-awareness and promoting learning and support within the team.

Paul Ryan, IJB Member, who also visited GIFFS said, “The GIFSS staff are very, very committed, very enthusiastic. They’re dealing with emotionally complex problems so one of the questions we asked was what support the staff get but they explained they have meetings and supervision – they’ve thought of everything. The GIFSS staff themselves said they were appreciative of our visit”.

Richard Gillespie, Team Leader, said: “We validate staff constantly but to have IJB leadership taking the opportunity to really try to understand what a staff group is doing is just really empowering for the staff team”.

Peter Orr, our HSCP’s Head of Children’s Services (North East), added “GIFSS staff, including those from partner organisations, are really proud and passionate to be part of the GIFSS team. To have IJB Members coming out and connecting with the staff and finding out about our service, especially when you’re providing a service to the most vulnerable families in the city, was just really validating to everyone in the team. I think it has been a really valuable opportunity for everyone".