FEATURE INTEGRATION
What matters to Mrs Jones?
Andrew Mickel talks to occupational therapists from Monmouthshire
Integrated Services about the successes of integration over the last decade
Integration has often felt like a promise that has
remained just over the horizon, but one integrated
service in Wales has been delivering on that
promise for the last 10 years.
Monmouthshire Integrated Services now has
hubs in Monmouth, Chepstow and Abergavenny,
delivering a huge variety of services with a wide
variety of professionals on a daily basis. It offers one
possible future for the many services now testing out
integration for the first time around the UK.
Occupational therapists were one of the first teams
to be integrated, with staff brought out of hospitals
from their reablement team and the community
into the integrated service. Now numbering around
30 staff, they work on a close basis with patients,
whether they find themselves in hospital, at home, or
at the service’s rehabilitation unit.
Kylie Davies, a specialist occupational therapist
working in the Abergavenny hub, says:
‘It’s amazing. I came to work for
Monmouthshire on a rotation 10
years ago, and I thought I love
how we work here; working
with many different conditions
at different stages of a
person’s life in the settings
they need us.
‘I work in what is
primarily a physical
disability team,
but I have
people who
go on to have
mental health
problems or
alcoholism and
I continue to lead
on support for them.
I can get mental health
colleagues in – and as they
do memory assessment clinics
they’re here everyday and I can
have a word with them – and that
doesn’t involve a laborious referral, and I
continue to lead on the work.’
Staff have a much better chance of getting to
know their patients by working with them over
longer periods of time in a more meaningful way. It
is helping to create both better care and a better
use of resources that is helping to reduce hospital
admissions and keep people at home.
What matters to Mrs Jones?
Integration started 12 years ago, building on an
existing agreement between the health board and
local authority to pool their budget and have a single
management structure.
Eve Parkinson, head of adult services at
Monmouthshire County Council, led the
occupational therapist integration at the start of
the programme. ‘’We looked at how people
would be handed over so many times – from
a hospital ward, on to reablement and then to
occupational therapists in community
roles,’ says Eve.
‘There was so much time
spent reassessing
people. So we
38 OTnews August 2020