Reimagining community services: Making the most of our assets

This King's Fund report calls for a radical transformation of community services that makes best use of all the assets in each local community.

It explains that this will mean breaking down silos between services in order to focus on improving population health as well as integrating care, including reference to housing and how it too can play its part in supporting care at or closer to home. To guide and adopt future models of community-based care, it sets out the following 10 service design principles:

  1. Organise and co-ordinate care around people's needs
  2. Understand and respond to people's physical health, mental health and social needs in the round
  3. Make the best use of all the community's assets to deliver care to meet local needs
  4. Enable professionals to work together across boundaries
  5. Build in access to specialist advice and support
  6. Focus on improving population health and wellbeing
  7. Empower people to take control of their own health and care
  8. Design delivery models to support and strengthen relational aspects of care
  9. Involve families, carers and communities in planning and delivering care
  10. Make community-based care the central focus of the system.