Ian Welsh explains why Scotland's new joint health and social care boards could herald the dawn of a new age of person-centred care

Last week the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 came into force marking a major milestone in the journey towards the integration of health and social care support and services in Scotland.

Many disabled people and people who live with long-term conditions tell us of their experiences of navigating a complex, disjointed system and having to tell their story repeatedly to different professionals. Integration seeks to make sure that support and services become more efficient and better able to support people to remain at home for longer and live well with long-term, often multiple and complex, conditions.

Health and social care is not simply about sustaining people, but about supporting all of us to participate equally and actively as citizens in our communities

Ian Welsh

While significant organisational reforms are undoubtedly necessary in this process, it is clear that integration must not amount simply to a structural exercise. Health and social care is not the job of statutory services alone and new strategic commissioning processes must interact intelligently with natural networks of support, community activity and third sector provision.

To this effect, the Scottish Government has set out a series of principles that outline health and social care services designed and delivered around people and communities. This requires people being listened to, their expertise valued and enabling them to have choice and control over their own lives. The principles also refer to people’s rights and to their human dignity. They are clear that health and social care is not simply about sustaining people, but about supporting all of us to participate equally and actively as citizens in our communities.

Speaking at a recent Alliance event on the Power of Prevention, the cabinet secretary for health, wellbeing and sport, Shona Robison MSP, stressed the importance of statutory services "opening the door to the innovative and imaginative practice that emanates from the third sector", and stressed that "we need to make sure that the third sector’s voice around the Integrated Joint Board table is heard."

The challenge now is to turn these principles into practice, making a difference to all of our lives, quickening the pace and scale of change and setting a new path for health and social care in Scotland. We know we have some distance to go but we now have a clear framework within which to progress.

Only time will tell whether we are right to be optimistic about the opportunity that integration represents. We believe transformative change is the only option and we hope the coming years will see a groundswell of movement towards health and social care that reflects the aspirations, value and contribution of those it supports.

Ian Welsh is chief executive of the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland