A new health and social care partnership will be launched this week in Aberdeen bringing together NHS Grampian and Aberdeen City Council Services.
The Aberdeen City Health and Social Care partnership (The ACHSCP) will deliver adult primary healthcare and adult social care. Multi-skilled teams comprising community nurses, mental health nurses, GPs, social workers and voluntary sector colleagues will support patients in the community and reduce unnecessary admissions to hospital.ACHSCP chief officer Judith Proctor, said: 'The partnership starts from the principle of person-centred care, with an emphasis on prevention and anticipation. That means finding ways for people in need of care to create partnerships around themselves in the four localities we are establishing in Aberdeen.
'Our population is changing and so we need to change the relationship we have with people, by supporting more self-care and self-management and more joined-up and seamless care for those we work with. Integration of health and care is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to reshape our services and make them agile enough to work well for the people of Aberdeen in the decades ahead,' she added.
The ACHSCP is one of 31 health and social care partnerships across Scotland as part of the Scottish government's programme to integrate health and social care. The partnership will have a budget of £250million to provide services.
The partnership is being overseen by an Integration Joint Board made up of representatives from the local authority and the NHS along with the voluntary sector, patient and service-user representatives.