Devolution and Health Governance in the Liverpool City Region (2016-17)

From December 2016, ICC Research Fellow Gayle Whelan will spend six months working with the University of Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute for Public Policy and Practice, examining Liverpool’s changing health governance landscape over the forthcoming years. It is likely that the Liverpool City Region will follow Greater Manchester in requesting that health and social care provision is included in the next City Region devolution deal. With a highly complex, layered, expensive, challenging and dispersed system such as health and social care, there is a need to plan effectively for this outcome so that the Combined Authority can begin the task of governing the health economy in a resilient manner, from a foundation of existing good practice and a sound and equitable understanding of requirements and key assets.

The Heseltine Institute is supporting the Liverpool City Region by providing a trusted, independent assessment of the current state of the region and by laying out a proposal for a Health and Wellbeing Governance Strategy, with a single mechanism of leadership supporting a set of integrated tasks representing the health and wellbeing needs and concerns of the region. Gayle’s work as part of this project will be to look at Greater Manchester’s experiences, who as part of their health and social care devolution deal, are already working to co-ordinate activity across organisations.

Gayle will establish a project advisory panel with key city region stakeholders; scrutinise emerging health policy documents from Greater Manchester; explore synergies, relative strengths and good practice across the six Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Groups; conduct elite interviews with experts in Greater Manchester and Liverpool, and produce a final report on the evidence gained.

This project complements the ICC’s existing research portfolio and strategic ambitions regarding cultural policy and public health, especially in relation to the role and value of arts and culture in integrated health and social care (see our Cultural Assets and Social Value and Cultural Value and Public Policy research themes for more information).