Conditions clash is block to integration

The different terms and conditions of social care and NHS staff are “probably the single biggest barrier to integrating services”, a workforce expert has claimed.

Vic Citarella, Skills for Care’s north west regional chair, told Community Care the Department of Health’s ambitions to co-locate health and social care services and create new roles that cut across the sectors required equal terms and conditions.

He said this had been a key finding of the first phase of Skills for Care’s New Types of Worker programme, which began in 2003 and has involved 28 pilot projects looking at developing new roles and ways of working.

This week, the DH confirmed it would provide 6m to fund the programme for another two years.

Citarella, who chairs the programme’s monitoring group, said the second phase would look at the workforce implications of creating integrated health and social care for older people and those with long-term conditions.

It would also examine the future of social work, given proposals in last year’s adult green paper to move from care management to “navigating” users around services.