Health and Social Care Policy and the Interprofessional ... - CAIPE

Chapter 2 - The UK Policy Agenda
Summary
In Chapter 2, in light of the Government’s new initiatives and models of
service delivery in interagency interprofessional care we have concluded that
as social care is an essential partner, social care policy must be included. We
have also included Department for Education and Skills policies in the section
devoted to children and young people.
We have deliberately excluded Higher Education policy as we wished to focus
on clinical practice rather than educational practice and to ensure that the
whole workforce is considered. We have however included the Statutory
Bodies who have profession specific responsibilities.
From our analysis it is clear that for decades the UK government has given
directives for an interprofessional, interagency workforce however this has not
been implemented widely in practice until recently.
Background
In our previous paper we examined whether there is a European agenda for
creating an interprofessional workforce and if so which EU and WHO policies
point the way forward. We were able to demonstrate that not only does policy
mandate interprofessional, interagency and inter-sectoral practice in health
and social care but also the need to forge partnerships with the environment,
transport, agriculture Directorates, whose policies also impact on the health
and well being of Europeans. We concluded that ‘policy makers and
strategists have made it crystal clear that the creation of an interprofessional
workforce is critical for the health and welfare of future generations and to
ignore their advice would, at the very least, be foolhardy’ (Tope & Thomas
2006). Starting from this premise, in this Chapter we intend to examine
whether, and if so with what degree of success, the UK Government has
implemented these EU and WHO policies.
It could justifiably be argued that in spite of progress being frustratingly slow
UK policy is showing other member states the way forward, in
interprofessional, interagency, inter-sectoral education and practice. Indeed
for more than eighty years experts have been advising the Government of the
need for interprofessional teams to work in partnership with patients and their
carers (see for example HMSO, 1920).
In 1959 the Younghusband Report focused on the role of social workers in
health care, remarking that it was essential for healthcare teams to
collaborate with social workers for the benefit of patients and their families
(HMSO, 1959). There was a flurry of activity during the late 1960s, 1970s and
1980s, with report after report being submitted to the Government, each of
which emphasised the need for increased interprofessional collaboration in
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