Bridging the divide: towards integrated health, social care, and education systems
Guest blog by Chris Sweeney, Director of Social Care Practice at System C #SocialCareTransformation
Chris Sweeney
Liquidlogic/System C
Chris is a dedicated public service professional with extensive experience spanning both the public sector and private organisations that collaborate with it. His career has been driven by a commitment to making a tangible difference to people’s lives, from supporting the development of colleagues and public sector staff to improving outcomes for members of the public who rely on essential services. He currently serves as the Director of Social Care Practice at SystemC, where he leads the Practice division responsible for the legislative and policy aspects of the company’s Liquidlogic social care products, which support local authority case management across adult and children’s services.
The disconnect between health, social care, and education systems in the UK has become increasingly apparent, undermining the ambitions of the ten-year plan and the neighbourhood model of care. Despite the rhetoric of holistic, person-centred support, individual agency systems remain siloed, with little alignment to the three key shifts: hospitals to community, analogue to digital, and treatment to prevention. This lack of integration not only hampers the effectiveness of services but also creates barriers in achieving the principles of the neighbourhood model of care and families first partnership programme.
Central to this challenge is a funding imbalance. Most resources continue to flow into the NHS, leaving local authorities—who are responsible for vital social care and education services—struggling with the effects of prolonged austerity. This undermines their ability to invest in prevention or community-based initiatives and perpetuates a reactive, single-agency based model, rather than supporting the shift towards preventative, integrated support within communities.
Structural barriers further complicate integration. The boundaries of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and local authorities are often non-coterminous, resulting in mismatched responsibilities and confusion over accountability. Recent reviews and boundary change announcements have done little to resolve these issues. The private provider sector, at the front and centre of care provision is equally fragmented, with many small and micro-providers lacking the scale or incentive to invest in technology and data sharing infrastructure. This splintered landscape makes joined-up working and innovation difficult to achieve.
At the heart of the data challenge is the absence of central standards and clear direction for data exchange. Mechanisms for sharing information are fragmented, with inconsistent protocols and limited interoperability between sectors. Data sharing for secondary uses—such as planning, research, or service improvement—is restricted, further impeding progress. This lack of standardisation and joined-up thinking stifles digital transformation and undermines efforts to deliver coordinated care.
The consequences of these issues are clear. For example, shared care records, which have the potential to improve support for children and families at relatively low costs, remain unavailable to many local authority children’s services, leaving professionals unable to access vital information electronically, resulting in duplicated effort and missed opportunities for early intervention. Similarly, the recent rollback of electronic hospital discharge integration with the abandonment of the ADW integration, piloted by SystemC at the Whittington Hospital and Islington over a decade ago has reversed hard-won gains, leaving many local authorities reliant on manual processes that delay support and increase risk.
To address these entrenched problems, we are calling on the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Department for Education (DFE) to work together to develop a clear, actionable roadmap. This should include the establishment of centre point-based messaging standards to ensure interoperability across sectors, targeted funding for priority use cases, and a systematic approach to categorising data exchange requirements. Standardised data sharing agreements should be developed and adopted nationally, providing clarity and consistency for all parties and to simplify roll-out. Where necessary, legislative change may be required to remove data sharing barriers.
In conclusion, the current disconnect between health, social care, and education systems is unsustainable and undermines the vision of integrated, community-based, and preventative care. By addressing the funding imbalance, overcoming structural and technological barriers, and committing to national standards for data exchange, policymakers can lay the foundations for a truly joined-up system. The time for piecemeal pilots and isolated initiatives is over—what is needed now is a bold, coordinated approach that puts people, families, and communities at the centre.
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Authors
Chris Sweeney
Director of Social Care Practice, System C
