Providing integrated health and social care for older people in the United Kingdom

This report provides an overview of the development of integrated health and social care provision for older people in the UK. It explore why integration is important,

identifies the main impediments to effective integration, considers failed past attempts and current initiatives designed to promote joined-up thinking and seamless care for older people, identifying the main models.

In the first two sections of this national report, we examine the national context within which health and social care provision has developed, and consider the extent to which recent policy changes encourage the move towards seamless health and social care. In the third section we review existing models that have evolved in response to the challenges facing these services today. In the annex we provide more detailed

descriptions of specific initiatives that provide exemplars of the main models identified in the third section.