Each month Connect focuses on a specific area that professionals tell us they want to explore in more detail.
In this month's Lunch & Learn we will be joined by Lyn Ranson, Clinical Consultant Lead of the West Midlands Trauma Vanguard project. Lyn has over 40 years’ experience in children’s nursing, safeguarding and system leadership. She established the West Midlands Trauma Vanguard in 2021 to develop a trauma-informed, integrated approach to supporting young people in complex situations. They actively engage young people to co-design services, challenging traditional models and pioneering a social, integrated approach across statutory and voluntary partners.
Lyn will be sharing how integrated working to support young people in complex situations works in practice in the West Midlands. The interactive session will include dedicated time for discussion and questions.
Join us on 23 April, 12–1pm. The session will take place on Zoom.
As the name suggests, integrated care is a coordinated approach to supporting the needs of young people - where professionals from across sectors, whether justice, education, health or social care, come together to facilitate a joined-up approach to understanding and addressing a young person’s needs. It is a particularly important approach for those young people in complicated circumstances, who might have multiple intersecting needs that would ordinarily fall across professionals in different sectors. Integrated care represents a shift in ideology, away from trying to “fix” individuals in isolation and towards creating a coherent, supportive, and young person centred system that can safety hold complexity overtime and ensure young people received the joined-up support they need.
Integrated care gives young people more coordinated, timely and consistent support. Instead of separate services creating separate plans, everyone works to one shared set of goals. This can lead to: quicker access to the right help, fewer repeated assessments or mixed messages, less pressure on families to coordinate everything, support that adapts as needs change. Overall, it can improve the experience and outcomes for young people by organising services around them, not around the system.
They’re related, but not the same. Multidisciplinary working involves different professionals collaborating around a young person’s care, often within a single service or organisation. While this is an important part of good practice, each professional may still deliver their part separately within their own system, which can leave families unsure who is responsible for what. Integrated care goes further by joining up professionals, services and processes across organisations to create a single, coordinated plan and a more coherent response for children and families.
