The Year of Care Programme set out to demonstrate how routine care can be redesigned and commissioned to provide a personalised approach for people with long term conditions (LTCs) and has successfully learned how to do this using diabetes as an exemplar. 

The Team previously housed by Diabetes UK and supported by NHS Diabetes is now hosted by Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust as ‘Year of Care Partnerships'.

A  3 year Pilot Programme across three diverse health communities worked to demonstrate how to make routine consultations between clinicians and people with diabetes and other LTCs truly collaborative via care planning, and then to describe how local services people need to support them are identified and made available through commissioning and Thanks for the Petunias -  A guide and supporting documentation for developing and commissioning non-traditional providers to support the self management of people with long term conditions (PDF 809KB). Care planning is now the norm for people with diabetes and other LTCs in pilot sites. This approach has multiple benefits (PDF 1.3MB), for people with diabetes and other LTCs, clinicians and commissioners.

These benefits are aligned with and support the delivery of national policy.

The Programme developed the Year of Care ‘House’ to support delivery of the key components of care planning and self management support in a systematic but flexible way.  This led to new approaches to both the redesign of diabetes services and commissioning for people with LTCs across the whole local system of care based on the principles and values of co production

The prototype has been tested with 12 other local diabetes communities, other LTCs such as COPD and multiple LTCs.  

The key information can be found in  Year of Care Report of Findings From the Pilot Programme (PDF 4.2MB), and Thanks for the Petunias (PDF 809KB). The RCGP report Care Planning – Improving the lives of people with long terms conditions (PDF 715KB) describes the practical steps needed to set up care planning in practice by ‘walking round the house'.

For more information contact enquiries@yearofcare.co.uk