MORE than £3 million in additional funding will be invested in Wirral's healthcare system over the coming year as part of a project aimed at improving the lives of the borough's communities.

“Healthy Wirral” – as the project is now known – is now able to invest an initial £3.4m into improving services to support people, wherever they live in the borough, to be healthy and happy by ensuring they have access to high quality and appropriate care in the right settings.

The project is a partnership between Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group, Wirral Community Trust, Wirral Council, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, local GPs, community groups and Healthwatch.

The funding boost comes after Wirral was successful in bidding to achieve “Vanguard” status by NHS England.

Healthy Wirral will be launched at a special event on November 26 at the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton.

Dr Peter Naylor, chair of Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “This is fantastic news for everyone in Wirral. We have a real opportunity now to use this funding to develop new ways of delivering care for the people of Wirral.

“The closer working of the partners provides huge opportunities to deliver care in new, innovative ways.

“The over reliance on hospitals and silo working of individual healthcare services simply are not an option for the future.”

Dr Naylor said Healthy Wirral will allow the health service to completely change the way in which care is delivered and arrange across the borough.

He added: “There is a lot to be done now but all of the partners are really up for the challenges we face. It is great that Wirral is now on the map for pioneering this work for the wider NHS.”

John Develing, chief executive lead for Healthy Wirral, said the partnership will be working closely with patients, community organisations and frontline staff to ensure they help to shape how services are provided in the future.

“Part of this work will be to understand how we can better support patients in their own home, and how we can support the wider population in staying as healthy and as independent as long as possible,” said Mr Develing.

Wirral Council leader Phil Davies, who is also chair of the Wirral Health and Wellbeing Board, said: “Everyone who lives here should have access to the right care, in the right place, at the right time and delivered in a way that suits their needs.

“We can use this funding to build on our successes and to work with GPs, nurses, social workers and other front line staff – plus of course patients – to put the care system in place which ticks each and every one of those boxes.

“It puts Wirral at the forefront of something potentially extremely exciting and while would like to congratulate everyone involved for a job well done I think we are all aware that the real work starts now.”

  • To book your place at the launch event, click here.