Limes Livingstone Integrated Care Project: Report findings from research for the PROCARE study

The ‘Procare’ project is a European study, funded by the European Commission’s fifth framework programme. A major challenge facing all European countries is population ageing, and the rising costs of long-term health and social care. This has been the subject of the ‘Procare’ study into issues, problems and solutions of providing integrated health and social care for older people. Integrated care In the UK, the problems of ‘joint working’ between health and social care have been documented since the 1940s, and evidence of fragmented working is widely recognised across the public sector. The demographic challenges of funding care and managing NHS and social services resources for an ageing population has led governments here and across Europe to focus upon integrated care for older people. The intentions of integration are twofold –firstly, it is expected to improve quality of care and enhance the older person’s experience of care, and secondly, there is an expectation that integrated working will be more streamlined, and therefore a more efficient use of resources. In terms of outcomes, there is a belief that integrated working will mean that older people get the support they need, and will then be able to remain independent for longer, with fewer admissions to acute hospital beds or residential care units. To date, this is a common sense assumption rather than being supported by empirical evidence, and the difficulties of conducting large scale, quantitative research amongst a section of the population for whom research access opportunities are limited mean that this may remain the case for some time