Safe Care Partnership Enters New Phase
A new phase of the Safe Care Partnership is underway, providing a revitalised mechanism for achieving key quality and safety priorities across NHS Wales.
The partnership’s new phase will bring together partners and key stakeholders to collectively achieve national quality and safety priorities determined by health boards and trusts, the NHS Wales Executive and Welsh Government.
Priority areas initially in focus are deconditioning and acute deterioration, alongside a Duty of Quality Leaders workstream that will support establishing Quality Management Systems across NHS Wales.
The new-look partnership will be dynamic, responding to shared priorities as they emerge, with plans for a further workstream focusing on healthcare acquired infections to be introduced later this year.
A new Leading for Quality and Safety Improvement (LQSI) training programme is also being introduced, creating a social learning peer forum for colleagues leading the delivery of improvement as part of the partnership.
Chief Nursing Officer, Sue Tranka, said: “This new Safe Care Partnership will be an important approach for achieving national quality and safety priorities that have been identified together by health boards and trusts, the NHS Wales Executive and Welsh Government.
“We have so much talent in NHS Wales, and the new phase of the Safe Care Partnership is a critical opportunity for us to come together and focus our collective efforts into achieving sustainable change that will put quality at the centre of healthcare.
“I am looking forward to seeing the excellent progress that I know we can make in the months ahead.”
Building on strong foundations
Founded in March 2022, the first phase of the Safe Care Partnership’s culminated with the Safe Care Collaborative ending in summer 2024.
Building upon learning, insights and successes to date, the NHS Wales Executive has co-designed the new phase of the partnership with colleagues across NHS Wales, public contributors representing service users and the wider population, and other key stakeholders.
Work in the partnership’s new workstreams has already commenced, with the recent publication of a new framework and methodology to support the adoption of Quality Management Systems in healthcare.
More than 30 projects have been accepted into a learning collaborative within the partnership’s deconditioning workstream. Building upon work of the Six Goals National Programme, the collaborative will see teams working collaboratively to identify sustainable improvements to prevent deconditioning.
The acute deterioration workstream will support the service to improve escalation systems and establish Call 4 Concern services throughout Wales, which will complement work already being undertaken by health boards and trusts with support from the new Acute Physical Deterioration Implementation Network to implement Early Warning Scores across all age ranges.
Dom Bird, Acting National Director for Quality, Safety and Improvement, said: “Combining the rich learning and insights from the partnerships first phase with the perspectives and expertise of NHS colleagues, members of the public and other key stakeholders through our co-design activity has provided incredibly strong foundations for the Safe Care Partnership moving forward.
“There is no doubt that challenges persist for us throughout NHS Wales, and there is a lot of work ahead in the priority areas that we have collectively identified, however the new phase of the Safe Care Partnership offers a real opportunity and a key mechanism for us to achieve meaningful change, for the benefit of both staff and the people of Wales.”
To find out more about the Safe Care Partnership, including information about its first phase and the current areas of focus, please visit the partnership's webpages.