We are working with neighbouring authorities and the NHS to provide a better way of securely sharing information between health and social care staff.
Connecting Care provides a single view of key information from organisations’ separate IT systems, helping professionals make better-informed and more timely decisions. This will not only benefit individuals receiving care, but also make it easier for people providing care.
People in South Gloucestershire will benefit in the following ways:
- We can provide early help and better safeguarding services
- They’ll receive safer, more appropriate and joined up care
- They won’t have to keep providing the same information to different agencies
- They’ll receive a better experience with fewer duplications or delays.
Connecting Care is already in place for adult care across Bristol, North Somerset and local health trusts and this extends its scope to South Gloucestershire Council and develops the system to cover childrens’ social care across the three authorities.
This is a better way of sharing the information we already exchange with each other, replacing a lot of sharing by post, fax, email and phone. Consent to share will usually be taken when people are assessed or contact a service, except where we have a duty to share information for safeguarding purposes.
The system is due to go live in the council in October for adult care and in January for children. Funding has come from the Government’s ‘Challenge Fund’ to help councils transform services.
