Introduction

Welcome to Somerset Council’s Market Position Statement (2023-26).

The Statement helps us to meet our legal duty to sustain and shape our local care market.

We want to transform social care and health services to achieve a focus on early intervention and prevention and improved person-centred outcomes.

This new statement focuses on adult care services, during the next 12 months this will be refreshed and updates to take a wider, all age approach, across Children’s Social Care, Public Health, Communities and Adult Social Care.

As a health and care sector, we continue to face ongoing challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, the needs of a population living longer with more complex conditions, a slowly shrinking working-age population, and increasing demand for care and support.

Our 2023-26 Adult Social Care Strategy highlights our priorities over the coming three year period and underpins this Market Position Statement.

The integration of Health and Social Care is key to driving transformation. We are working closely with our partners, including the Integrated Care Board and voluntary and community sector to develop a ‘Place Based’ vision and plan for the commissioning and delivery of health and care services.

Our ambition is to improve outcomes and meet the needs of local communities by focusing on prevention and population health to reduce health inequalities.  We aim to achieve this ambition through the development of collaborative strategic commissioning for Somerset communities.