Development of a clinical and care professional leadership framework in Lancashire and south Cumbria Integrated Care Board

The NHS Transformation Unit (TU) comprises a team of experts that bring a wide range of skills and experience to meet our clients’ needs. We recently used our Stakeholder Engagement expertise to support Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) to develop a comprehensive Clinical and Care Professional Leadership Framework (CCPL Framework). The purpose of the CCPL Framework is to ensure that the full range of Clinical and Care Professional Leaders, from diverse backgrounds, are involved in decision-making throughout the ICS.  

The Challenge

In 2021 NHS England and Improvement published guidance on the need for practical changes to help transition to system working across each Integrated Care System (ICS). Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB commissioned the TU to support the development of a Clinical and Care Professional Leadership Framework to reflect the broad range of multi-professional roles required to work together across the system. This new structure and approach will ensure that decision making within the ICB is led by clinical and care professionals, and focussed on improving patient care and community outcomes in each Place.

The vision for the Framework is to improve outcomes for patients, ensure the right services are delivered in the right places, provide equal access to services, and improve the health and wellbeing of its population.

The client approached the TU to build upon work undertaken previously by the ICB to develop a framework to support sustainable, effective delivery of the ICB strategy. They wanted to:

• Base the framework on national principles whilst ensuring the framework met the needs and fit the culture of the LSC system and its Places.
• Design and implement a governance structure including establishing different forums to support both place and system to deliver the ICB’s strategic goals.
• Develop job descriptions and role specifications for all system level and place-based roles within the framework.
• Create a support offer for Clinical and Care Professional Leaders with a particular emphasis on leadership development.

Our Approach

Our team set up a steering group to provide strategic guidance and oversight to the work. We asked steering group members to contribute to the development of key parts of the framework, drawing upon the wider expertise of their ICB teams. We worked closely with ICB colleagues involved in earlier stakeholder workshops and built upon their early work to develop the initial draft of the framework.

We worked closely with the client to plan and deliver two large workshops, the purpose of these was to:

• Engage with wider stakeholders to understand their views on clinical leadership in the ICB.
• Listen to the views of multi-professional leaders within the system.
• Begin the process of designing sustainable multi-professional leadership roles.

We worked with current system leaders to design and develop a set of multi-professional leadership roles. We produced job descriptions and role specifications for these posts.

The Outcome

The TU has developed a comprehensive multi-professional leadership framework for Lancashire and South Cumbria (LSC) which adheres to national guidance and is tailored to the requirements of the system and its places. The second phase of our commission focused on the implementation of the framework. This included:

• Setting up the first system wide Assembly group. We brought together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss key issues and challenges within LSC , and how a multi-professional approach could help address these.
• A development framework. This framework will support LSC leaders throughout their tenure as CCP leads at System or Place, enabling them to develop their own skills, access support and learning opportunities and become an effective senior leader.
• An implementation plan which provided the client with next steps in implementing the framework as well as an approach to monitoring the maturity of the work.
• The development of documentation to support the ongoing recruitment process for the CCP leaders in both system and place.

We also led the development of the framework governance which resulted in the development of key forums:

• Assembly (system-wide) – Brings together a wide range of stakeholders to deliver an agreed programme of work and oversee the implementation of Clinical and Care Professional Leadership Framework (CCPL) in line with national guidance.
• Placed Based Advisory Group (one per Place) – Aims to provide equality of access to services and to improve the health and wellbeing of its population at Place.

The two groups will support the delivery of the strategic objectives of the ICB at both a system and place level.