Southwark Alliance

Healthy Southwark Partnership Board

Multi-agency partnership work to tackle health improvement and good quality health and social care provision is well developed in Southwark.

The Healthy Southwark Partnership Board is the health improvement partnership for the borough. Its membership involves senior managers from across the health and social care sector, together with other statutory and voluntary sector partner agencies. Membership includes Southwark Primary Care Trust, Southwark Council, Kings College Hospital, Guys and St Thomas’s Hospital, South London and Maudsley Mental Health Trust, Southwark Community Care Forum and Southwark Action for Voluntary Organisations.

Healthy Southwark works to align priorities in the Community Strategy with those of the Southwark PCT Operating Plan 2008-9.

Healthy Southwark has a number of sub-groups that focus on the key public health priorities as identified by the partnership:

Tobacco Alliance: Oversees the development of the tobacco strategy; smoking cessation and prevention, tobacco control, illegal sales.

Obesity Steering Group: Oversees the ongoing development and implementation of the Southwark Obesity Prevention and Management Strategy.

Physical Activity Steering Group: Promotion of Physical activity.

Mental Health Promotion: Mental health awareness training and suicide prevention.

Sexual Health: Teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, access to services

Issues of health and well-being for children and young people are part of the remit of Young Southwark the Children's Trust.

The Health Act 1999 made provision (Section 31 Partnership Arrangements) for health bodies and local authorities to pool resources and create new co-ordinated services. There are a number of partnership boards that are using these provisions to improve services in Southwark:

Learning Disabilities - focusing on adults
Mental Health - focusing on adults and elderly
Older People -focusing on community care, day care and intermediate care
Physical and Sensory Disabilities
Vulnerable Adults - under review

These sub-partnerships bring together service commissioners, service providers in the statutory and voluntary sectors, user representatives, carers and wider community representatives.

Integrated community mental health teams
Joint health and social care mental health placement panels
Integrated assessment and care management for people with learning disabilities
Multidisciplinary health teams for adult therapies, challenging needs, and psychology

Related strategy documents can be accessed from the following links:-

Southwark Health & Social Care Strategy

Southwark Health Improvement Strategy 2007-2012

Southwark Obesity Prevention & Management Strategy

Southwark Tobacco Control and Smoking Prevention Strategy

Southwark Sexual Health & HIV Strategy 2006-2009

Southwark Suicide Prevention Strategy

Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy

For more information about health partnerships, contact:

Healthy Southwark Partnership -

Rosie Dalton-Lucas

Tel: 0207 525 0271