Improving Health and Care through the home: A National Memorandum of Understanding
Improved Health and Care Through the Home - a renewed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), sets out why organisations urgently need to work better together.
It reflects on the success of previous cross sector commitments which have led to housing solutions being at the centre of improving health and supporting acute health and care services meet growing demands.
The 2018 MoU commits all the signatories to build on previous successes to ensure that more joint working across housing, care and health services can impact positively on the experience of a greater number of people needing and using health and care services. In particular, it aims to:
- Support national and local dialogue and information exchange to inform better strategic decision-making across government, health, social care and housing sectors.
- Coordinate health, social care, and housing policy to offer a more integrated approach to national policy development and advise on local implementation.
- Enable local partnerships to collaborate more effectively across health, care and housing when planning, commissioning and delivering homes and services.
- Ensure the public and service users are heard and involved in collaborative work across health, care and housing.
- Promote the housing sector contribution to: addressing the wider determinants of health; health equity; improving people's experience and outcomes; preventing ill health and safeguarding.
- Promote the adaptation of existing homes and the building of new accessible housing with support which is environmentally sustainable and resilient to future climate change and changing needs and aspirations.
- Develop the workforce across sectors so that they are confident and skilled in understanding the relationship between where people live and their health and wellbeing, and are able to identify suitable solutions to improve outcomes.