The Active and Independent Living Programme in Scotland

ACTIVE AND INDEPENDENT LIVING PROGRAMME (AILP)

The AILP document was launched at the NHSScotland Event on 21 June 2017 by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport. AHPScot are pleased to bring some of the key points from the document in this week’s blog. Where to find more info about AILP can be found at the end of the blog.

Foreword by the Chief Health Professions Officer

Allied health professionals (AHPs) in health and social care in Scotland are making a significant contribution to driving service improvement and sustainability across community and acute sectors. Working as integral parts of multidisciplinary teams in multi-agency arrangements and focusing on people’s personal outcomes, they provide preventative interventions in areas such as supported self-management, diagnostic, therapeutic, rehabilitation and enablement services. As such, they will be key to supporting delivery of The Scottish Government’s plan for transforming health and social care services in Scotland. The breadth and depth of AHP skills and their reach across people’s lives, communities and organisations makes them ideally placed to lead and support services towards a greater focus on prevention and early intervention. They also contribute to supporting people to live independently in their local communities and consequently reduce dependence on health and social care services.

AHPs have embraced the concept of co-production and delivering personal-outcomes approaches. Increasingly, they are shifting their focus to an earlier stage in a person’s health and wellbeing journey, away from traditional models of provision in hospitals to where people live their daily lives. AHPs locally and nationally are extending their ambitions and improvement skills towards approaches that will also deliver the wider prevention, early intervention and enablement agendas set out in the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan. The Active and Independent Living Programme (AILP) will provide national improvement support and connectivity with other related policy work streams.

A key element will be support for culture change across the professions to shape and drive improvement. This document summarises the key ambitions of AILP, which are founded on public health and AHP evidence, current best practice and an extensive engagement process. It is not an exhaustive list, as the work will necessarily evolve as we better understand the needs of people and services through our AHP Lifecurve survey.

I am nevertheless confident that actions arising from the ambitions will bring about more upstream working and improve outcomes and experiences for people who use services, their families and carers. Our original commission from the Minister for Public Health was to make the contribution of AHPs more visible and accelerate the impact and spread of effective practice across Scotland, ensuring an explicit fit with the wider policy landscape. The AHP National Delivery Plan made measurable progress towards this goal, and we now have the opportunity to work with others to move to a clear focus on prevention & early intervention.

Jacqui Lunday Johnstone, OBE Chief Health Professions Officer, Scottish Government

AILP HEADLINES …

What is AILP?
The Active and Independent Living Programme (AILP) will support allied health professionals (AHPs), working in partnership with fellow health and social care staff, to deliver key elements of the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan and other national policies, such as Transforming Primary Care and the integration of health and social care. It sets out the broad strategic direction for the programme, including the six overarching ambitions, to drive significant culture change in how people can access and receive AHP support for self-management, prevention, early intervention, rehabilitation and enablement services.

An improvement programme within AILP will drive this agenda by delivering improvements in support for people to manage their wellbeing, live active and independent lives, become or remain economically active and participate in their local communities. Priority areas will be identified over the course of the programme to ensure alignment with national policy and local developments. An action plan setting out the key deliverables and improvement programme will be published in each year of the programme, and specific articulations with national strategies and initiatives will be reflected in annual update reports.

What is the AILP document, and who is it for?

The AILP document provides a framework to describe and further engage the AHP contribution to developing new approaches to active and independent living.

The target audience is chief executives of NHS boards, chief officers of health and social care integration authorities, independent contractors, executive leads for AHPs in NHS boards, and key strategic leaders across health and social care and other agencies, as well as the general public and people who use services.

What are AILP’s aims?
AILP aims to provide focus to the contribution AHPs make, working with other professions and partners across agencies to improve the health and wellbeing of the population throughout the life-course. It offers opportunities to fully realise the benefits of an emphasis on wellbeing and wellness, in addition to the effective treatment of ill health. In this context, it sits neatly within the objectives of the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan by focusing on the AHP contribution to delivering better health, better care and better value.

What is its focus?
The primary focus of the AHP contribution is to ensure this work is embedded locally within partnerships, GP clusters, hospital services and integration authorities, thereby contributing to achieving targets set out in local strategic commissioning plans.

What will be different?
The innovation this programme will bring to prevention, early intervention and rehabilitation will transform not only the way AHPs work, but more importantly, also help the people of Scotland to live healthy, active and independent lives, thereby supporting the national health and wellbeing outcomes. Working to the AILP ambitions and with partners across all professions and sectors, AHPs will develop their targeted and universal interventions to make a more visible, accessible and measurable contribution to supporting the populations they serve. Prevention will no longer be the ‘wicked problem’. It will be embedded in strategic plans of joint integration authorities, with clear deliverables to support the aims of the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan.