Understanding Integrations: how to listen and learn from people and communities

This guide is for partners working in integrated care systems (ICSs), with ideas on how they might listen to and learn from people and communities. Created by the King’s Fund and Picker on behalf of NHS England and NHS Improvement, this guide has been developed with input from intergrated care systems (ICSs), patient leaders, and engagement and experience experts.

It offers a practical, evidence-based approach to help partners come together to work with communities to identify what people need, what is working and what could be improved to provide join-up care.

After making a case for change and outlining ten essential principles for partners and leaders to work to, the guide suggests order of steps to support teams through the process of understanding people’s and communities’ experiences of integrated care, as followed:

• What is the aim of the project?
• Who needs to be involved?
• What do we want to find out?
• What is already known?
• Who do you need to hear from?
• Which approaches are most appropriate?
• How can we collect and interpret what we hear?
• How do we turn data into action?
• And, where are we now?

This guide provides a framework for how ICSs and place-based working offers an opportunity to ensure that the voices of people and communities are at the heart of health and care.