Neighbourhood based care board update – January 2026
January's meeting included updates on progress from Bexley and Greenwich, and a key focus on children and young people.
The South East London Neighbourhood Based Care Board (NBCB) is made up of colleagues from across our integrated care system, and meets every month to oversee and guide progress towards a neighbourhood-based model of care. As outlined in the government’s 10 Year Health Plan, the aim is to make health and care services more proactive, more joined-up, and more responsive to the needs of local people and communities.
The Board’s first meeting in 2026 heard an update on progress from colleagues in Bexley and Greenwich, feedback from a workshop held with Integrators in December, and a detailed introduction to a framework for Integrated Neighbourhood Teams focusing on children and young people (one of the three initial core areas of work for neighbourhood working).
Bexley and Greenwich – making progress on many fronts
Delivering neighbourhood working is a major change for how the NHS and other health and care partners work together. It requires new processes and relationships, ensuring that priorities are agreed and aligned, deciding how to allocate the initial £250k of funding given to Integrators, and a host of operational details, including identifying the physical locations for neighbourhood health centres and integrated neighbourhood teams.
Colleagues from Bexley and Greenwich updated the Board on the progress they are making in these and many other areas. One measure in all boroughs is the ‘maturity matrix’ that our Integrators use to show where they are on specific workstreams. Both Bexley and Greenwich have engaged with multiple partners – including voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations – to update their maturity matrix. What they show is they scope, scale and ambition of neighbourhood working, and that there is good progress being made. They also show that this is a long journey of transformation, and we are still in the early stage of delivering it.
What is also clear is the level of commitment and enthusiasm around neighbourhood working, and how partners are actively engaged in making this work.
December integrator workshop – building success together
Integrators are the partnership organisations responsible for delivering neighbourhood working. In south east London there are six Integrators, one for each borough.
As each Integrator develops and ‘matures’, it is important that they come together to share learning, compare progress and discuss issues, so that we can build success together, avoid unnecessary duplication, and create the environment in which we can test ideas and learn collaboratively from each other’s mistakes and advances.
The first of these meetings was held in December, and was very constructive and forward-looking. We will share a full written report soon.
Priority focus: a framework for children and young people
Our plans to deliver neighbourhood working are starting in areas of need where we know personalised, joined-up support can make the biggest difference. These areas are:
- People with three or more long-term conditions
- Older adults living with frailty or nearing end of life, and
- Children and young people with complex needs.
At this Board meeting, colleagues from across our integrated care system presented the framework for delivering integrated neighbourhood teams for children and young people.
They told Zack’s story. Zack (not his real name) is a young man with a complex home and family situation, and complex health needs. In a health system where he is in the hands of many different agencies who do not always work in a joined-up way, Zack’s care is fragmented, and opportunities to help him are missed, because the people dealing with him are focused on their specific job, not on the complete picture of Zack’s health and life.
The Children and Young People’s framework shows how, by coordinating Zack’s care within an integrated neighbourhood team, we can start from the big picture, and then deliver the coordinated care Zack needs, bringing together the multiple agencies who work with him.
This is, of course, easy to say but complicated to deliver. So the Framework lays out clearly how we can – and will – do this. And it demonstrates how the use of population health data will help us proactively identify more children and young people like Zack, who will benefit from interventions from health and care services, and then benefit further, from coordinated support from neighbourhood teams.
You can read the full framework in the Board papers.
You can also find papers and presentations from all previous Board meetings on our website.