A partnership led by the Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care (WIHSC), based at University of South Wales (USW), has been awarded a contract with a total value of more than £1m for the national evaluation of the Health and Social Care Regional Integration Fund (RIF).
The three-year programme of work is a collaboration between USW, Swansea University, OB3 Research, University of West of Scotland, and Bangor University.
Launched in early 2022, the RIF – worth around £150 million per year – has provided a renewed focus on community-based care, emotional health and well-being, supporting families to stay together safely, care experienced children, home from hospital services and accommodation-based solutions.
Professor Mark Llewelyn, Director of WIHSC said:
“Our partnership has been commissioned to understand the way in which the RIF is delivering on the transformative promise that it set out.
“The evaluation of the RIF aims to understand the impact of different models of care. We will investigate the economic costs and benefits of those models and investigate how far they are delivering the right outcomes for people.
“We've been asked to explore whether those models of care have proved to be effective, and if so, how they can offer ‘templates’ for the wider system to learn from so that the whole of Wales benefits.”
Announcing the appointment of the partnership in the Senedd, Deputy Minister for Social Services, Julie Morgan MS, said:
“The pressures on our health and care system are continuing to challenge us.
“The Welsh Government wants people to be able to live their best lives as independently as possible in their own communities. The ability of health and social care organisations to work together as a whole system is essential as more people live for longer, sometimes managing multiple health conditions, and with diverse care and support needs.
“Learning and improvement is an important part of our ethos for the development of health and social care. I'm therefore pleased to announce that after a competitive tendering process, we've secured the services of the University of South Wales, in collaboration with OB3 and Bangor and Swansea Universities, to undertake the evaluation of our RIF.
“It's evident that in its first year, the RIF has started to further a true partnership approach to investing in integrated services for the long term. I will be taking a keen interest to see how our national models of integrated care continue to evolve over the next year.”
