Eastbourne Integrated Community Team

Working together for a healthier, fairer Eastbourne

The Eastbourne Integrated Community Team, or ICT, brings together partners from across health, social care, local government, housing, education and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.

We are working together to improve health and wellbeing across Eastbourne, with a particular focus on acting earlier, joining up support and reducing health inequalities.

Too many people experience poor health and wellbeing too early, for too long, and with too little coordinated support. The greatest burden often falls on people facing the greatest disadvantage. We want to change that through a more joined-up, neighbourhood-based, prevention-led and relationship-centred approach.

Our vision

A healthier, fairer Eastbourne where communities and services work together as one neighbourhood team, acting earlier and helping people stay well and independent.

We know that good health is shaped by much more than healthcare alone. Housing, relationships, income, education, work, our environment and our sense of connection all influence how healthy we are.

That is why the ICT brings different organisations and communities together around a shared ambition for Eastbourne.

 

Our values

People first

We listen, involve and design around what matters to people and communities.

We want people and communities to have a genuine voice in shaping priorities and solutions.

One team

We work across organisational boundaries with trust, openness and shared accountability.

No single organisation can improve health and wellbeing alone. We want people across different services and sectors to increasingly work as one neighbourhood team.

Always improving

We learn, act early, challenge ourselves and keep making things better.

We use data, evidence, local insight and lived experience to understand what is needed, test new approaches and learn from what works.

Our approach

The Eastbourne ICT is not a new service or a new organisation.

It is a way of bringing partners together to agree shared priorities, align effort and solve problems that are difficult to address within individual organisations.

Our work is guided by a few core principles.

Act earlier

We want to shift effort towards prevention and earlier help, reducing the risk that people become more unwell or reach crisis.

Work around people, not organisations

We want support to feel more joined up, with fewer gaps, difficult handovers and unnecessary barriers between services.

Use data, insight and lived experience

We combine population health information with professional knowledge and what local people tell us.

Focus on outcomes

We want to understand whether our work is genuinely improving wellbeing, access, prevention and people's experience of care.

Learn and improve

We will test new approaches, evaluate them and spread what works.

These principles reflect the ICT's purpose of improving outcomes, narrowing inequalities, identifying priority population groups early and enabling more joined-up, multidisciplinary support.

A life-course approach

We want to improve health and wellbeing across the whole life course.

This means thinking about people's needs from childhood through adult life, older age and the end of life.

Starting well

Supporting children, young people and families to build strong foundations for lifelong health and wellbeing.

Living well

Helping people stay physically and mentally healthy, identifying risks early and preventing avoidable illness.

Ageing well

Supporting people to remain independent, connected and well as their needs change.

Dying well

Supporting personalised, coordinated and compassionate care towards the end of life.

This life-course approach runs across all of our work, including our focus on children, young people and families as well as adults and older people.

Tackling health inequalities in everything we do

Reducing health inequalities is not a separate project for the ICT. It is a principle that runs through everything we do.

People across Eastbourne do not all have the same opportunities to enjoy good health, and some communities experience greater barriers to support or poorer outcomes.

We therefore ask:

  • Who has the poorest outcomes?
  • Who faces the greatest barriers?
  • Who are existing services not reaching?
  • Where are there avoidable differences in access or outcomes?
  • What would make support more accessible and trusted?
  • Are our actions narrowing inequalities or unintentionally widening them?

Sometimes this will mean focusing additional effort on particular groups or communities.

Our aim is not simply to improve average health outcomes across Eastbourne. It is to improve outcomes while narrowing the gaps between people and communities.

Our four pillars

The work of the Eastbourne ICT is organised around four strategic pillars.

1. Understand and prevent

Proactive population health

We want to understand Eastbourne's health needs better and act earlier.

By bringing together data, local insight and lived experience, we can identify which groups and communities face the greatest risks and where prevention can make the biggest difference.

This includes:

  • understanding patterns of health and wellbeing
  • identifying priority population groups
  • recognising inequalities and unmet need
  • intervening earlier
  • preventing deterioration and avoidable crisis
  • using data and local knowledge to guide decisions

Our focus

Understand need, act earlier and reduce inequalities.

This reflects the ICT's formal aim of identifying priority cohorts and intervening early to prevent deterioration and reduce crisis demand.

 

2. Join up care

Integrated delivery

People's needs do not fit neatly within organisational boundaries.

We want services across Eastbourne to work together more effectively around people and shared priorities.

This means:

  • working as one team across organisations
  • reducing gaps and duplication
  • improving referrals and handovers
  • coordinating support for people with complex needs
  • clarifying roles and responsibilities
  • helping neighbourhood teams work together in practice

Our focus

Work as one team, make it simpler and coordinate care.

The ICT has a specific responsibility to enable integrated, multidisciplinary delivery and remove barriers that make joint working more difficult.

 

3. Listen and co-design

Community partnership, prevention and patient voice

Communities should be partners in improving health, not simply recipients of services.

We want local people, voluntary and community organisations and people with lived experience to help shape priorities and solutions from the start.

This means:

  • listening to what matters to local people
  • designing solutions with communities
  • strengthening community and voluntary sector partnerships
  • improving access and trust
  • making services more welcoming and inclusive
  • involving community voice in decision-making and delivery

Our focus

Listen, co-design and build trust.

The ICT is committed to meaningful community and voluntary sector involvement, with particular attention to trust, accessibility and community-informed design.

 

4. Build capability

Workforce, learning, improvement and innovation

Integrated neighbourhood working depends on people having the skills, relationships and confidence to work differently.

We want to build capability across the whole neighbourhood workforce, not just within individual organisations.

This includes:

  • growing skills and leadership
  • learning across organisations
  • building shared understanding of population health
  • using evidence and evaluation
  • supporting improvement
  • testing new ideas
  • developing digital capability
  • spreading approaches that work

Our focus

Develop our people, learn and improve, and test and innovate.

Workforce development is part of the ICT delivery model itself, rather than a separate activity.

 

How the four pillars work together

The four pillars are designed to reinforce one another.

  • Understand and prevent helps us identify where attention is most needed.
  • Join up care helps services respond together.
  • Listen and co-design makes sure local people and communities shape the response.
  • Build capability develops the skills, relationships and learning needed to make change sustainable.

Across all four pillars, we apply the same two lenses:

  • the life course, from starting well through to dying well

and

  • health inequalities, focusing effort where need is greatest.

Who is involved?

The Eastbourne ICT brings together partners from across the local system, including:

  • primary care
  • community health services
  • mental health services
  • adult social care
  • children's services
  • public health
  • local government
  • housing
  • community pharmacy
  • hospices
  • Healthwatch
  • voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations
  • other local partners where relevant

Each organisation brings different expertise, knowledge and relationships.

The ICT creates a shared space to align those strengths around the needs of the Eastbourne population.

Turning shared priorities into action

For each priority, we aim to:

Understand

Use data, local insight and lived experience to understand the problem and who is most affected.

Prioritise

Agree where collective action can make the greatest difference.

Act

Bring together the right partners to deliver practical change.

Measure

Track whether the work is improving outcomes and reducing inequalities.

Learn

Use evidence, evaluation and feedback to improve what we do.

Spread

Build successful approaches into everyday neighbourhood working.

How will we know we are making a difference?

We want to measure success by outcomes, not simply activity.

Our long-term focus is on improving wellbeing across the Eastbourne population.

Alongside this, we will look at indicators such as:

  • prevention and early intervention
  • access to care and support
  • unplanned use of health and care services
  • people's experience of care
  • progress for priority population groups
  • the effectiveness of multidisciplinary working
  • reductions in health inequalities

The ICT's formal framework identifies wellbeing as the long-term outcome measure, supported by shorter-term indicators such as prevention uptake, unplanned admissions and access performance. Eastbourne ICT TOR May 2026

Building a healthier Eastbourne together

The Eastbourne ICT is an evolving partnership.

Its success will not be judged by the number of organisations involved or the number of meetings held, but by whether things become better for local people.

We want people to:

  • stay well for longer
  • receive help earlier
  • experience more joined-up support
  • find services easier to navigate
  • have a stronger voice in how support is designed
  • experience fairer health outcomes

By bringing together the strengths of our communities, our workforce and our local services, we can build a healthier and fairer Eastbourne.

One neighbourhood. One team. A healthier Eastbourne.

Get involved

We welcome connections with local organisations, community groups and people who share our ambition for a healthier and fairer Eastbourne.

If you would like to find out more, contribute to our work or explore opportunities to collaborate, please get in touch.

Contact

ANGIE GREANY?!