Hilary Garratt (Deputy CNO for NHS England) and Deb Sturdy (Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care at the Department of Health and Social Care) are working with the Florence Nightingale Foundation to establish Shared Decision-Making Councils for adult social care in every ICS in England, to ensure the professional voice of nurses in this sector are heard and for the councils to act as a touchstone to support ICS’ in their work.  

We are now welcoming applications from social care nurses for the role Council chairs and Hilary and Deb have written a joint letter to the NHS regional Chief Nurses to cascade to the 42 ICS Chief Nurses to encourage people to apply.

Skills for Care, the strategic workforce development and planning body for adult social care in England, are supporting us with recruitment to the role of chair.

You can find details of how social care colleagues can apply here.

Once individuals have been identified as chairs, we will be in contact to facilitate introductions between chairs and ICBs to discuss their future Council meetings. The agenda and frequency of Council meetings are for ICBs and the chairs to decide together. However, we envisage these to be no more than three to four times a year.

To support the social care nurses who have been appointed as Council chairs, we have developed a five-day bespoke development programme to support them to best engage and provide connectivity to the voice and experiences of the frontline social care workforce. This is a unique opportunity to help set expectations for the Councils as we help them become established.

We hope this will help ICS’ deliver the shared vision for an integrated system, one that is inclusive of the social care sector’s voice and its role in delivering high quality care. 

If you would like a conversation about establishing connections to local care providers, or possible routes to identify a chair for your Council, you can find details of local area teams here. For further details about the development programme, please contact Lucy Brown at: [email protected]e