Website of the Department of Health

Foreword

This is the first Agreement exclusively between the Department of Health, the NHS and the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). It will benefit patients, carers and service users by providing them with real alternatives so that they can choose services that best suit their needs.

This Strategic Agreement is the manifestation of the real sense of partnership that has emerged over the last few years within the health and social care sector. It has been based on the work done by a joint working group made up of representatives from the VCS, health and social care and the Department of Health as a framework to promote the increasing role of the VCS in contributing to health service planning and delivery as well as comments received from the Making Partnership Work consultation.  The Strategic Agreement is intended to underpin and complement, not replace, the Compact and its Codes of Good Practice at all levels of partnership working.

The success of the Strategic Agreement depends on genuine and lasting partnership on the ground.  Informed by the responses to the consultation exercise, the members of the Making Partnership Work Strategic Group recommended the establishment of a multi-stakeholder National Strategic Partnership Forum to support and build on this Strategic Agreement. Reporting directly to Ministers, the Forum will have real influence, and will proactively focus on action to address the practical barriers to making partnership work on the ground.

We are therefore pleased to put our name to this Strategic Agreement and to hand it over to the Forum to be the foundation for genuine and meaningful strategic partnerships for the benefit of NHS patients and service users.

Dr John Reid
Secretary of State for Health

Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart
Chair of Local Government Association

Sir Nigel Crisp
Chief Executive, Department of Health and NHS

Harry Cayton
Director of Patients and the Public
Department of Health

Sarah Mullally
Chief Nursing Officer
Department of Health

Sir Nicholas Young
Chief Executive, British Red Cross

Stuart Etherington
Chief Executive
National Council for Voluntary Organisations

Gill Morgan
Chief Executive, NHS Confederation

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