3rd July 2025

Your Healthcare CIC welcomes ‘Fit For The Future 10 Year Health Plan’

Your Healthcare welcomes ‘Fit For The Future – 10 Year Health Plan for England,’ published today by the Department for Health and Social Care.

At the core of the plan to reform the NHS are ‘neighbourhood health services.’ These integrated services will embody a new preventative principle that care should happen as locally as it can: in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed and in a hospital only when necessary. According to the report, to make this happen there will be a proportionally greater investment in out-of-hospital care over the next three to four years, as local areas build and expand their neighbourhood health services.

Commenting on the 10 Year Plan, Your Healthcare’s managing director Ed Montgomery, said: “There is a great deal of interesting narrative in the 10 Year Plan. Neighbourhood health services will aim to deliver ‘truly seamless care in the community,’ addressing key issues such as; preventing unnecessary hospital attendances by, for example, continuing to expand access to urgent and emergency care services at home;  fully integrating rehabilitation and recovery into wider local services and expanding capacity; working in partnership with family hubs, schools, nurseries and colleges to support children, young people and their families; extending Start for Life services to enable health visitor and speech and language support for more children and their families; addressing unnecessary transfer to hospital among people living in care homes and those who have frailty; and improving end-of-life choices.

“Your Healthcare already delivers high-quality services in all these core areas, in close partnership with colleagues in health and social care and the voluntary sector, and we very much welcome this renewed focus on the vital role of community health and social care expertise in an integrated health setting.

“As the report identifies, small amounts of community expenditure can unlock disproportionate amounts of hospital capacity. We are especially pleased to see the 10 Year Plan commit to putting a higher proportion of NHS expenditure into community settings. We are also pleased to see themes from the social enterprise model reflected in the Plan. Increased autonomy for high-performing teams, the freedom to innovate, and a desire to liberate staff from the burden of ‘bureaucracy and administration’ are all strong features of social enterprises. We firmly believe the social enterprise model has the potential to be developed, replicated and scaled up nationally and internationally in community health and social care.

“We look forward to discussing with our partners how a neighbourhood health service can best serve our local community.”