Consultant's catch-up

Much of our guidance has traditionally been produced on behalf of patients and the NHS. However, over the last two years our remit has widened to include public health guidance. An increasing amount of NICE guidance now has direct relevance for local authorities in their role as promoters of health and well being. At the same time, local authority health overview and scrutiny committees have been increasingly interested in looking at the quality of local NHS services. Here again NICE guidance has a role to play as an evidence based source of reference, supporting their work. The Implementation Consultants are currently meeting with local authorities in their roles as both providers of services and as scrutineers to raise awareness of NICE guidance and how it may help them in their work.

In response to the request for more effective signposting of NICE guidance to local authorities, a resource was piloted and developed in November 2007 called 'Local Area Agreements - NICE Recommends´. This document directed local authorities to NICE guidance which could be used to support the development of services as part of their Local Area Agreement (LAA). Following positive feedback this was updated in March 2008. As a result of this successful approach we have now agreed to work with the national LAA Forum to produce a web-based NICE guidance signposting document which will help people in local government find NICE guidance which is relevant to the areas in which they are working. The field team will be following this up in the autumn with a programme of local visits that will focus, in particular, on children's services. Briefings will also be offered to regional networks of Directors of Children's Services and Directors of Adult Services.

Recognising the importance of councilors in local scrutiny, both of the role of the NHS in implementing clinical and public health guidance, and the role of local authorities in implementing NICE public health guidance has led the field team to offer visits to every Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee in England during 2008. The first visits are now underway and there will be feedback in future articles. However, if you are involved in health scrutiny and have not yet arranged for one of the Implementation Consultants to provide a briefing for your overview and scrutiny committee, please email fieldteam@nice.org.uk to arrange a visit.