What's next? Planning for the future in a changed world
"How can we possibly plan for the next few years?"
That's a comment we, at the ihub, hear a lot these days. It's probably a statement that a lot of health and social care colleagues are considering at the moment too as they think about how best to respond to the operational and financial challenges the sector is facing post COVID-19.
So, just how can health and social care services plan ahead for an uncertain future?
Strategic planning sets out the ambitions of an organisation. A strategic plan is a set of choices and principles to support the achievement of long-term goals, drawing on evidence and setting challenging but realistic timescales for achieving them. Effective and robust strategies draw upon the expertise of their staff, partners and the people using their services to guide and inform them.
The ihub's Strategic Planning portfolio supports health and social care systems through the provision of tailored support based on local need. This assists NHS boards and health and social care partnerships (HSCPs) to undertake robust and effective strategic planning as the foundation for delivery of high quality health and social care services.
Good practice framework
In late 2019, we published a good practice framework for strategic planning. The framework notes that strategic planning for health and social care is evolving to an outcomes-focussed approach and recognises that good strategic planning uses evidence of good practice and identifies opportunities to apply innovative approaches locally.
Over the past number of weeks, we have worked with a number of HSCPs to learn from their experiences of developing innovation in order to develop guidance and a toolkit to help leaders and their teams to enhance how they plan.
Each of the HSCPs that we spoke with have faced different challenges in delivering care and support but also have different opportunities in their local communities. But for all of them, having, or developing, a robust strategy is vital in either overcoming those challenges or maximising opportunities.
Getting ready for life after COVID-19
No one can predict what will happen as lockdowns are gradually eased. While we all hope for a degree of normality, there is every likelihood that further waves of infection will force new lockdowns over the next year or so.
Dealing with uncertainty is core to strategic planning and should offer opportunities for innovation and challenging 'the way we've always done things around here.' This means that we need to build resilience into our practices now, whilst at the same time, continue to keep an eye on the mid to long term so that today’s decisions remain valid for whatever may be around the corner.
Learning from actions
Ultimately, we can all only speculate as to what might be ahead and to prepare accordingly. For HSCPs that means learning from the actions they took during the early stages of the pandemic, retaining, formalising and building on those that worked, and abandoning those that did not. Ultimately, as is always the case, those that can do this successfully will be several steps forward along the path of transformation into a truly agile and flexible organisation.
In our next opinion piece, we will discuss what we are aspiring to do as part of our current work and will share some very initial thoughts and observations, along with our early thinking and opportunities to get involved.
