The Audit Commission have published the second in a series of briefings looking at adult social care.

At a time when the whole of the public sector must find significant savings, the report says that integrated working across health and social care offers opportunities for efficiencies and improvements to services. Without it, there is a risk of duplication and ‘cost-shunting’ where savings made by one organisation or sector create costs for others. And a lack of integrated working means that people are less likely to receive the best care.

But the briefing also finds that the NHS and councils have made patchy progress in improving this joint working across health and social care.

The briefing offers guidance to local partnerships, setting out a list of questions to consider, and suggestions for interventions that might help. Case studies show how some areas have embraced partnership working and used local data and benchmarking to establish how and where to make improvements.

NHS and social care partnerships can benchmark their performance against others by using the tool that accompanies the briefing.

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