County Durham Care Partnership

It's at heart of everything we do in the County Durham Care Partnership, joining up health and social care, giving you better, connected health services, closer to home

It's the effective collaboration between health, social care and voluntary organisations across County Durham that is bringing real, positive improvement to people's health, wellbeing and experience of care. We're improving and redesigning services where it matters most, to better meet your needs and keep the people of County Durham happy, healthy and at home

Find out about how we're caring for you, with you in the short animated film:

County Durham Care Partnership video animation transcript (PDF, 120.6kb)

The County Durham Care Partnership brings together NHS organisations, such as County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust, County Durham Clinical commissioning group Durham County Council and other health and care providers in a true collaboration, driving our ambition to further develop system-wide integrated models of care.

We have a shared vision across the Partnership, and we live by it, delivering everyday by collaborating and driving our ambition to develop even more system wide integrated models of care through all the organisations involved

Our health and social care staff work closer to patients in their homes wherever possible, improving access to care and making it available at the right time, while reducing unnecessary hospital admissions, avoiding duplication and promoting independence.

Better care, joined up care, closer to home

It's about putting the people at the centre of everything we do, moving away from a hospital-based model of care to a new way of working, based on collaboration and partnership, to provide more care in people's homes and their community at the same time breaking down barriers between services. 

This means joining up the work of general practices, community services and hospitals to meet the needs of people requiring care. 

All parts of the health system working side by side

A key strength of the commitment to develop a truly integrated health care system for County Durham was to align clinical leadership for oversight and governance across the partnership.

Working together in this way is starting to show real benefits across County Durham. By building Teams around Patients (TAP), locally based district nurses are working closely with teams of social workers and therapists, often based in the same building, so they get to know each other and how their services work best together. 

This makes it easier to join up the care packages designed for patients, linking in with specialist services as needed, including GP practices who are also working more closely together in GP led Primary Care Networks.

Improving community services

At the heart of this integrated approach was the development of a new service delivery model for community services where council delivered adult social care services are positioned alongside NHS community provision, wrapped around primary care in a new integrated service. 

By working together in this way we're able to maximise our collective strengths as care providers to bring about faster improvements in care, joining up services and making the system easier for patients and service users to access - all helping to keep the people of County Durham happy, healthy and at home.