Commissioning home care for older people – Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) 

This guide captures the latest research findings on this important and emerging area of social care. It also provides some practice examples of good work in this area. The guide is aimed at health and social care commissioners of home care services for older people with complex needs. Providers of these care services may also find it useful.

Safe staffing frequently asked questions – NHS England

NHS England has issued an updated FAQ document (June 30 – new FAQs are D1 and D29) further to the guidance letter issued on 16 May concerning Trusts submitting staffing data. More details on NQB staffing guidance can be found in the following document: How to ensure the right people, with the right skills, are in the right place at the right time – A guide to nursing, midwifery and care staffing capacity and capability.

Meeting need or fuelling unnecessary demand? – Nuffield Trust

This briefing studies the effects of demand for services of improved access to primary care. NHS England commissioned this briefing by the Nuffield Trust to ensure that the successful pilots from the Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund were in a position to learn from past experience and research. It examines how far increased access to general practice and other primary care services will deal with unmet need, or whether these efforts may only serve to stimulate additional use of services that would not have otherwise occurred.

NHS foundation trusts: survey on the NHS provider licence – Monitor

This survey focuses on the impact of the licence conditions on NHS foundation trusts during its first full year of operation. Monitor would like to hear from NHS foundation trusts and other interested parties in the healthcare sector. The survey will be open until 31st August 2014.

DH highlights five areas for £2bn savings drive – HSJ Article 

The Department of Health has pinpointed five key areas where it wants the health service to cut costs in a bid to slash £2bn from the 2015-16 budget, HSJ has learned.

New flexible working request regime – NHS Employers 

A new flexible working request regime came into force on 30 June 2014. Read what this means for employers.

Local authority health scrutiny – Department of Health (DH) 

Local authorities are responsible for scrutinising local health organisations to ensure they are providing effective, efficient services and encourage improvement. The guidance explains the health scrutiny regulations and provides local authorities with advice about how to implement them to ensure that existing health services are providing effectively for local communities.

Board meeting – 3 July 2014 – NHS England

The next Board meeting will take place on 3 July in Birmingham in The Nicolson Building, 58 Edgbaston Park Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2RT starting at 10.30am. The Board meeting will be broadcast live as part of our commitment to make information as accessible as possible. The livestream is best viewed in Firefox, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 and 9 with the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. You may experience issues viewing this content in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. The live broadcast will be added to our livestream page on the date of the board meeting. A separate recording of each agenda item will then be published on YouTube in the following few days.