RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Back to the future? Lessons from the history of integrated child health services in England
JF Future Healthcare Journal
JO Future Healthc J
FD Royal College of Physicians
SP 183
OP 187
DO 10.7861/fhj.2021-0093
VO 9
IS 2
A1 Edward J Maile
A1 Ritvij Singh
A1 Georgia B Black
A1 Mitch Blair
A1 Dougal S Hargreaves
YR 2022
UL http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/9/2/183.abstract
AB The UK has a long history of attempts to integrate child health services to improve outcomes, an ambition renewed in the recent The NHS Long Term Plan. It's therefore timely to review the history of integration to inform future initiatives. Key milestones include the Platt report (1959), Court report (1976), Sure Start (1999), National service framework (2004) and Facing the future report (2015). These stand against a backdrop of national NHS policy changes, with a myriad of local integration initiatives and research efforts in parallel.We suggest lessons for future integration initiatives: integration may support the quadruple aim; integration depends on addressing divides between primary and secondary care; workforce and funding challenges need to be resolved before integration can thrive; high-quality research and evaluation of integrated interventions is required; strong relationships between professional groups are key to integration; and integration can help address health inequalities.