Assura: Supporting the value of VCSE health partnerships

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Assura, which will continue our work to help embed local VCSE sectors into Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in England, and maximise the potential of working together. In this blog post, we explore the partnership further, which aims to support and maximise the value of VCSE partnerships with health and care structures.

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Following on from our delivery of NHS England’s Embedding the VCSE in ICS Programme, in partnership with the Assura Community Fund, NAVCA will offer a range of support to ensure local VCSE organisations and ICSs can continue to build their partnership approaches to addressing health inequalities and improve the health and wellbeing of local communities.

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Assura plc is a national specialist property company based in Altrincham, caring for more than 600 primary care buildings across the country from which over six million patients are served. The Assura Community Fund is supporting health-improving projects in the communities surrounding those buildings, and Assura is targeting net zero carbon across its portfolio by 2040.

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With Assura’s support, NAVCA will continue to offer a Peer Network for VCSE Alliance Leads and ICB employees with responsibility for system-level partnership building with the VCSE sector. The network provides a space for people working to build VCSE partnerships at system-level to share knowledge, surface challenges, discuss solutions and successes, and to escalate issues requiring a national response. The network will benefit from NAVCA’s close links to networks delivered by our partners in NHS England and NHS Confederation.

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We have also developed a new integrated care resource area of our website, providing access to the vast body of materials and best practice examples we have gathered over the years of supporting new relationships between health, care and the VCSE organisations. Including examples of memorandums of understanding, business cases, job descriptions and policies and procedures to develop effective joint working, this resource offers a repository of all information relating to the development and effective delivery of VCSE-ICS partnership working. It provides a space to share and access learning we gather on an ongoing basis from our work to support VCSE-ICS Alliances and partnership working across the country.

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Finally, we will be working directly within several ICS areas, offering bespoke support to help achieve their ambitions to further strengthen and develop their partnerships. Alongside support to develop the partnerships, Assura will be making an investment of £375,000 (£75,000 per area) to fund the work of grassroots community organisations working directly with communities to support their health and wellbeing. The sites receiving this support are:

• · Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire
• · Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
• · Nottingham and Nottinghamshire
• · Hertfordshire and West Essex
• · North East and North Cumbria

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Sandra Meadows MBE, Chair of NAVCA, said:

‘’For several years, NAVCA has been working to support the partnerships being developed between local VCSE sectors and ICSs that will be critical to new ways of working to address entrenched health inequalities and maximise the power of community action. NAVCA members have been critical to the successes we have seen to date and, just over a year since ICSs became statutory bodies, we are pleased with the progress being made to build strong partnerships. We are seeing the hard work taken to build new VCSE Alliances, and embed these within ICS structures, begin to take practical action to tackle health inequalities and realise the value of working in genuine partnership with local communities. Much progress has been made, but we know there is still much more to do. We are delighted to be working with Assura Community Fund to continue to support work to make these partnerships stronger and more effective across England.’’

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Karen Nolan, Social Impact Lead for Assura said:

‘’We are delighted that we will be working with NAVCA and ICS colleagues across the country to support the continued integration of the VCSE sector with the NHS. The sector is in a unique position to understand and respond to the health needs of the communities that they serve, providing vital support to the wider health system. Improving integration with the VCSE sector will inevitably lead to better health outcomes for communities and I am thrilled that Assura can support the continuation of the excellent work completed so far.’’

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This work forms part of NAVCA’s activity in supporting the VCSE sector in the field of health and wellbeing. If you’d like to know more about our work, or the role of our members, or would like to discuss how we might help in your Integrated Care System, please visit our website or contact alex.boys@navca.org.uk