Working together is at the heart of everything we do in the County Durham Care Partnership. The effective collaborations between health, social care and voluntary organisations across County Durham is bringing real, positive improvement to people’s health and wellbeing and their experience of care.

The partnership was formed three years ago to allow council delivered adult social care services to work more closely with NHS community health provision, wrapped around primary care, bringing people on the frontline together in a new integrated service.

We wanted to make the most of the clinical expertise of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, the accessibility and skill in GP practices and the local knowledge and links of the council.

We also wanted to concentrate on residents who needed support with their health and their social care. They told us that they expected hospitals, GPs and social care teams to work together, with as much care as possible delivered at home. They wanted us to help them live independently with their families and in their communities. By working together and moving away from a hospital-based model of care we were able to lead the changes to health and social care that needed to be made to achieve these expectations. We created “Teams around Patients” or TAPs, which are based on GP practices and made up of community nurses and therapists, social care staff and the GP teams all working closely together, often in the same building.

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This means that at a local level we are working more closely together than ever and concentrating on our most vulnerable residents, including in care homes, and providing invaluable medical support to community hospitals. Coming together in this way makes it easier to join up care packages, linking in with specialist services as needed

It also allows us to build on our strong sense of community, the skill and commitment of health and care staff, our network of GP practices and improvements in health and wellbeing services to make life easier for those people who get health and social care in the county.

The Covid pandemic has highlighted more than ever before the need to continue to work together and we plan to deliver even more care closer to home, continue to support care homes and further involve our voluntary groups in supporting residents.

It is this shared commitment to serve residents across the county that is helping to bring about faster improvements in care and keep people happy, healthy and at home.

Find out more about the work of the County Durham Care Partnership here:  https://www.durham.gov.uk/carepartnership and follow Twitter @CDCarePartners and Facebook: CountyDurhamCarePartnership.