Powys Teaching Health Board and Powys County Council seek views on draft Health and Care Strategy for Powys

http://www.powysthb.wales.nhs.uk/health-and-care-strategy

Powys Teaching Health Board and Powys County Council have today published their first ever draft Health and Care Strategy for Powys.

Based on insights gathered from surveys, workshops and focus groups across the county the draft strategy sets out a high level vision for the future of health and care to 2027 and beyond. Public engagement on the draft strategy continues over the coming months and local communities are encouraged to have their say.

Publishing the draft strategy today (25 January 2017), Professor Vivienne Harpwood, Chair of Powys Teaching Health Board, and Cllr Barry Thomas, Leader of Powys County Council, said:

“We are delighted to introduce our draft Health and Care Strategy.

“Importantly, our organisations are working together with key partners and the people of Powys to plan for the future of health and care.

“We all know that these are challenging times, particularly with the prolonged period of austerity and the changing needs of the people of Powys. We also know that Powys is a place where we aspire to help improve the wellbeing of all people. This is why this draft strategy seeks to enable children and young people to ‘Start Well’, for people to ‘Live Well’ and older people to ‘Age Well’.

“Over 1000 people have contributed in some way to the development of this strategy so far and we would really value views on what has been produced.

“Whilst it doesn’t describe the detail of the developments at this stage, it does outline the direction we feel is important to take. Promoting wellbeing; offering early help and support to people; tackling the big four diseases that limit life; and providing joined up care are the key areas that we suggest become priorities for action. This means that we will spend more time and effort helping people to stay well, to help them act early to prevent ill health and get support, and where care and treatment is required that we work with people to ensure care is joined up and based on what matters most to the individual.

“We also want to provide as much care as possible in Powys. There has been real success over the last few years with the introduction of new services, and we feel that—with the development of new technology, for example—we could do more in Powys. We know that some people will continue to need to travel for services out of county, but we will focus on improving access wherever possible.

“We would like to thank everyone who has helped to shape this strategy so far. We hope you enjoy reading the work so far and welcome your comments on how we could improve it further.”

More information about the strategy is available from a dedicated web page at http://bit.ly/powyshcs There will also be opportunities to get involved via social media including through the #PowysHCS hashtag on Twitter.