Making the most of our assets

Beverley Marriott is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner working in the Birmingham community healthcare foundation trust. She is also a King’s College Older Person Fellow. She tweets @bevbighair

The Reimagining community services report (Kings Fund 2018) highlights the need for strengthening community services with the aim of supporting our  older population, bringing to reality the vision set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View.

Unfortunately, the concept of reimaging services brings about concerns with growing financial and workforce pressures, these pressures could have a huge effect on the delivery of the recommendations. This could have a major impact on the ability of service providers to deliver services to meet the needs of the service user.

The Reimagining Community services report suggests that radical transformation of community services is required.  This would mean an additional share of the NHS budget. The NHS budget would be given to these services in order to make effective use of all the assets with our community.