Published on: 5th April 2019
We have become part of a new formal partnership in Bury which aims to transform health and care services for local people.
The Bury Local Care Organisation (Bury LCO) launched on 1 April 2019 and aims to improve local people's health and wellbeing.
This new formal partnership includes our organisation, along with Bury Council, Bury GP Federation, BARDOC, Bury Voluntary, Community and Faith Alliance, Northern Care Alliance NHS Group (Salford Royal and Pennine Acute Hospital NHS trusts) and Persona Care and Support Ltd.
We have made a commitment to work together to transform local services, make sure help and support is joined up and to get the best value for public money.
The Bury LCO is responsible for the majority of health and care services provided outside hospital. It has a budget of £27m to spend on these services and a team of around 600 health and care staff, including our nurses and therapists.
A key aim is to provide people with health and care services in the home and the community wherever possible. This will help them avoid having to go into hospital or a care home unnecessarily.
The borough has been divided into five areas - and each will be supported by a dedicated neighbourhood team. This will include health, social care and voluntary, community and faith sector professionals, who will work together to deliver more joined up care and support.
There is a big focus on tailoring services for these different areas of Bury, where people have different health and care needs, as well as encouraging people to have healthy lifestyles.
For example, Prestwich has a high proportion of older people and so we will be carrying out more strength and balance training here to help reduce the number of injuries caused by falls.
Local decisions for local people
A similar partnership approach is happening in boroughs right across Greater Manchester, which is leading the way with this new health and care partnership approach.
We are involved in this work in the boroughs we cover (Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Stockport, Tameside and Glossop and Trafford).
It follows the historic devolution deal, which saw the Government allow Greater Manchester to take control of its £6 billion health and social care budget.
The aim is to allow services to be tailored to local people's needs and each borough has produced a plan on how to do this (called a locality plan).
In Bury, the new LCO is contributing to delivering the borough's locality plan and has received £19.2 million from the Greater Manchester transformation fund to do this.
Look out for more information about how the Bury LCO is improving services.
Pictured above (left to right) are: Margaret O’Dwyer, director of commissioning and business delivery/deputy chief officer, Bury Clinical Commissioning Group; Sajid Hashmi MBE, independent chair, Bury Voluntary, Community and Faith Alliance); Vicky Riding, chief executive BARDOC Limited; Geoff Little OBE, chief executive of Bury Metropolitan Borough Council and accountable officer for Bury One Commissioning Organisation; Claire Molloy, chief executive, Pennine Care NHS Foundation trust; Jack Sharp, group director of strategy and service development for Northern Care Alliance NHS Group; Martin Clayton, chief officer, Bury GP Federation Limited