Money and people
Pooled budgets and workforce across boundaries.
- Level
- Bitesize
- Learning time
- 1 hour 15 minutes
- Where
- Leading Health and Social Care Integration
- Price
- £39
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion
Overview and Outcomes.
Overview
Money is where partnership commitments are tested, and the way it moves reveals what partners are prepared to risk together. This module starts from the Total Place lesson of counting the whole first, maps where prevention value lands, and sets out four ways to bring money together. It compares England's Better Care Fund with Wales's Regional Integration Fund, reads the 2026 Audit Wales review and closes with five questions for any pooled fund. No structure cares for anyone: care is a workforce before it is a structure. This module looks at the scale of the adult social care workforce challenge using Skills for Care figures, the pressures on multidisciplinary teams, and Edgar Schein's three levels of culture. It compares NHS and social care workforces, the Fair Pay Agreement in England and the Welsh route, then sets out six practices for a joint workforce.
What you'll develop
In this Bitesize, you will develop the ability to:
- Explain why counting the whole before splitting the parts, and seeing whose budget benefits and how soon, changes partnership conversations about prevention.
- Compare aligned budgets, lead commissioning, pooled budgets and integrated provision, and the different designs of the Better Care Fund and the Regional Integration Fund.
- Assess a pooled fund's purpose, governance, risk sharing, evidence and exit plan, including the oversight duties Audit Wales highlights for statutory members.
- Explain why an integration plan must also be a workforce plan, using the scale of adult social care vacancies and the four recurring pressures on multi-agency teams.
- Use Schein's three levels of culture to diagnose why joint working stalls below the surface, and recognise how employment differences between the NHS and social care shape who is heard.
- Plan practical steps for a joint workforce, including the six practices, support for unpaid carers, volunteers and peer workers, and care for the people who do the caring.
The Modules.
1 hour 15 minutes of learning.
- 04Money: Pooled Budgets, the Better Care Fund and the Regional Integration FundMoney is where partnership commitments are tested, and the way it moves reveals what partners are prepared to risk together. This module starts from the Total Place lesson of counting the whole first, maps where prevention value lands, and sets out four ways to bring money together. It compares England's Better Care Fund with Wales's Regional Integration Fund, reads the 2026 Audit Wales review and closes with five questions for any pooled fund.38 min
- 05People: Workforce, Professions and Culture across BoundariesNo structure cares for anyone: care is a workforce before it is a structure. This module looks at the scale of the adult social care workforce challenge using Skills for Care figures, the pressures on multidisciplinary teams, and Edgar Schein's three levels of culture. It compares NHS and social care workforces, the Fair Pay Agreement in England and the Welsh route, then sets out six practices for a joint workforce.37 min
Keep going.
Part of the Leading Health and Social Care Integration topic, also sold whole as One system, one person.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereBitesize, 1 hour 15 minutes, £39
- Next stepFocus, The integration landscape, 3 hours, £69. Already own the Bitesize? You pay £30.
- The whole topicExplore, One system, one person, 6 hours, £129. Already own the Bitesize? You pay £90.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Health, care and home, Health and care, joined up, Joining up care