Foreword
This is Our Health, Our Lambeth. As Lambeth Together’s health and care plan, it sets out how health and care services in Lambeth will work together, and with residents and communities, to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for people of all ages and from all our communities, over the next five years.
We recognise that we are not an equal borough. We have faced exceptionally challenging times in recent years – significant cuts to public services, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ongoing cost of living crisis. The impacts are not felt equally, and poverty, racism and inequality have worsened health outcomes for many in our community.
Together, we must rise to these challenges and be bold in our actions to overcome them – not be afraid to do things differently to support our residents, patients, partners, carers and staff. We can do better by working together in partnership to transform how we support our patients, carers, and residents. Through Lambeth Together, and our innovative Delivery Alliances, we will work to improve health and care outcomes by building on our already strong relationships, developing programmes of work to address all health and care activity in Lambeth, and prioritising fairness and equity in all we do.
Our focus as a health and care system will be on tackling unfair and avoidable differences in health
between different groups of people. To do this, we must support people to lead healthier lives. We must do more to prevent ill health, and provide support earlier if people become unwell. People must have access to a positive experience of health and care services that they trust and that meet their needs.
We are committed to improving the lives of every Lambeth resident, without leaving anyone behind. The key to this will be supporting a range of positive and action-focused approaches that seek to remove unfair and avoidable differences experienced by people with characteristics protected by the Equality Act. In Lambeth, this includes taking an anti-racist approach to build our communities’ trust and confidence in our services.
Our plan responds to the priorities, developed by residents and communities, set out in the Lambeth Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the Lambeth Borough Plan, and is aligned with the South East London Integrated Care system’s Strategic Priorities. We have developed our plan from the intelligence presented in the Lambeth Health and Wellbeing Strategy, the learned experience of our partners and the lived experience of residents from across our diverse communities. We have set out the changes we want to make, what we need to do to achieve them and what help we need, over the next five years. Our plan is ambitious. We also recognise that we will need to learn from our experiences and adapt to changing circumstances as we go, using research and evidence to continue to understand and act on the causes of health inequity in Lambeth.
Lambeth Together Care Partnership Board Co-chairs
Dr Dianne Aitken
Lambeth GP
Cllr Jim Dickson Cabinet Member for Healthier Communities, Lambeth Council
About this document
Title: Our Health, Our Lambeth – Lambeth Together health and care plan 2023-28
Purpose: To set out how health and care services in Lambeth will work together to improve health and wellbeing outcomes over the next five years
Approved by: Lambeth Together Care Partnership Board
Date: 18 May 2023