Community Health Services

The Neighbourhood Health Framework is designed to empower local leaders to develop and scale neighbourhood health, and to provide clarity and consistency to support joined-up working between integrated care boards (ICBs) and local authorities.

The framework outlines the national minimum aims and objectives of Neighbourhood Health Services and maps the process systems should go through to establish local metrics and plans. The framework references how general practice, primary care, pharmacy, mental health provider, civil society partner, and social and community health services can work together to shift care from hospitals to communities. This is not an exhaustive list of all possible providers of neighbourhood health services but illustrates the types of providers with whom we are actively working. It is not prescriptive.

No specific criteria were used to determine the providers that were included in the framework. The framework does not prevent other providers from being part of neighbourhood health services.

It is important that reforms are locally led, as ICBs and local authorities are best placed to design services that make sense for their local populations. However, there are actions that work everywhere, so the framework sets out a minimum set of interventions for all ICBs to deliver over the next three years. This will provide the building blocks of an effective, joined-up Neighbourhood Health Service.

We recognise that delivering a Neighbourhood Health Service will be an incremental process, as both local understanding develops and national reforms progress. We will regularly update the Neighbourhood Health Framework to reflect learning from communities.