Childcare/education
Sure Start settings
Grants & funding
Inclusion
Health partnerships
Encouraging Effective Partnership Working with the Health Sector
There are a number of steps you can take to encourage effective partnership working with health colleagues. Examples include:
- Identify and highlight common aims and objectives
- Find out who your key contacts in the health sector are such as Children's Leads in Strategic Health Authorities, Children's Leads in PCTs, Heads of Midwifery/Maternity Services, Children's Leads within Mental Health Trusts and local GPs and practice staff
- Be clear that, in working with health professional, you are not looking for great changes in structure or practice but an adaptation of approach that will promote integration, prevent duplication and ensure a more consistent approach for families.
Data Sharing
Please click here to view a letter which was sent by the Sure Start Unit in November 2002, clarifying current legislation on sharing basic personal information between NHS bodies and Sure Start partnerships.
We are working with partners to:
- ensure that health issues are embraced within other policies, such as childcare and workforce strategies
- ensure that issues that influence health are a priority in the development of integrated children's services
- spread the learning about new ways of working from our programmes to others working in children's services
The Priorities and Planning Framework - this sets out the priorities for the NHS and social services over the next three years to 2006. Health inequalities and life chances for children have been idenitified as priority areas for action.
The Children's Centres Implementation Update No 5 offers further guidance on how to successfully engage health in the development and implementation of children's centres.
Additional Useful Links
Community Practitioners' and Health Visitors' Association
National Service Framework for Children (2004)
Partnership Working a Consumer's Guide to Resources
