Creating a Single Gateway to Community Health & Wellbeing Services

North Somerset’s model is precisely what Integrated Care Systems have been asked to build: a community-rooted, data-enabled gateway that connects residents to preventative support before they reach statutory services. It’s local innovation in service of national ambition.

The Challenge

North Somerset Council like many local authorities are facing significant financial pressures
coupled with increasing demand on services alongside limited visibility of community-based
support. They advertised community services on their main website, but residents and
professionals found it difficult to navigate to the right help — and the directory itself struggled to
keep pace with the voluntary sector it was meant to represent.
In addition frontline staff within the council found it difficult to find reliable, current information about
community services to refer, signpost clients to specialist support they might need.

Specific challenges included:

• Service data that was rapidly becoming out of date and unreliable
• Low engagement from VCSE organisations with the existing directory
• No clear pathway for residents, social workers or healthcare professionals seeking
community-based support
• No facility for residents, social care teams to refer into community services
• Limited internal capacity to manage and maintain the directory
• No data or insight to help commissioners understand demand, gaps or outcomes, health
and wellbeing outcomes
• Low visibility, awareness of services in diverse communities

National Policy Context

North Somerset Council’s response directly mirrors the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan, and the national Neighbourhood Health Framework (March 2026) — shifting resource upstream, activating community assets, and reducing pressure on statutory services before crisis hits.

The Government’s Neighbourhood Health Framework sets out a clear ambition: Neighbourhood Health Centres that bring together GP services with community, local authority and civil society sector services — making care easier to access, easier to deliver, and reducing pressure on the wider system. It explicitly positions neighbourhood health as a joint endeavour between the NHS and local authorities, requiring genuine partnership across health, social care and the voluntary sector.

The Local Government Association has been equally clear about the local authority’s role. In its guidance on neighbourhoods — from policy intent to lived reality — the LGA argues that neighbourhood health works best when powered by relationships, trust and lived experience, not just structures. It calls for VCSE organisations to be involved early and consistently, supported by local infrastructure organisations that can coordinate engagement and ensure diverse community
voices shape priorities and delivery.

North Somerset’s model delivers precisely this. It places a trusted local infrastructure organisation (VANS) at the centre of delivery, connects residents to preventative community support before statutory services are needed, and provides commissioners with the data and insight to understand population need and gaps. At a time when Integrated Care Boards are
actively seeking VCSE partnerships that can demonstrate population-level impact, North Somerset has built exactly the kind of locally-rooted, data-informed infrastructure that national policy has long called for but rarely seen delivered at scale.
This positions North Somerset not just as a local success story, but as a blueprint for what effective place-based neighbourhood health can look like across England — and a practical demonstration that the shift from policy intent to lived reality is achievable.

Route to Simply Connect

North Somerset Council heard about Simply Connect through Voluntary Action North Somerset (VANS), who had been working with the platform for a number of years to manage VCSE data and deliver local authority contracts.

When VANS were asked to update the existing council directory, they recognised that a more ambitious approach was needed — one that invested in local infrastructure, not just technology. Simply Connect met with the Head of Adult Social Care, Digital Transformation Lead and Service Development Manager to map challenges, needs and vision.

From that conversation, six strategic themes emerged:

1. Whole Population Approach
   A digital gateway enabling residents to access preventative support earlier, manage physical health, build social connections, and get help before reaching statutory services.
2. Accessibility & Inclusion
   An easy-to-use platform embedded within the community, featuring trusted, quality-assured services and reaching people who find it hardest to access support.
3. Visibility of Community Assets
   Making local VCSE strengths visible, supporting frontline professionals to refer with confidence, and enabling commissioners to identify gaps and duplication.
4. Data & Insight
   Real-time commissioner dashboards surfacing user demographics, need, referral patterns, service demand and outcomes — enabling evidence-based decision-making.
5. Value for money
   Transparent pricing reduced duplication across services, and monitoring of outcomes and demand — providing clear evidence of Return on Investment and use of public
   funding.
6. Commission for Sustainability
   To create long-term, sustainable support for residents across North Somerset by embedding collaboration between statutory and voluntary sector partners into a single, scalable system.

 

Beyond the Directory: Simply Connect as a Full System Platform

Simply Connect is not simply a referral tool or service directory. It is a comprehensive community health and wellbeing platform, designed to support the full journey from first contact to long-term outcomes — for residents, for social prescribers, and for commissioners seeking system-level insight.

The platform can currently offer:
● A quality-assured service directory and community gateway — enabling residents to
find and self-refer to local services, and professionals to make warm, tracked referrals with
confidence.
● Social prescribing case management — supporting link workers and frontline staff to
manage caseloads, record interactions, and coordinate support across organisations.
● Health and wellbeing tracking tools — capturing validated outcome measures that allow
commissioners and practitioners to understand the real impact of social prescribing and
community support on individual wellbeing over time.
● Client feedback tools — giving residents a voice, surfacing lived experience to improve
services, and providing the kind of community intelligence that commissioners and
neighbourhood health teams need.
● Real-time commissioner dashboards — surfacing demand patterns, service gaps,
population demographics and outcomes data to support evidence-based commissioning
decisions.
● Volunteer brokerage — matching residents and organisations to volunteering
opportunities, enabling councils and VCSE partners to mobilise community capacity at
scale. Already in active use by VANS across North Somerset.
● Befriending management tools — supporting the coordination and oversight of
befriending programmes, helping to address social isolation with the structure and
governance that funders and commissioners require.

What this means for North Somerset — The current deployment in North Somerset represents the first phase of a broader ambition. As the platform matures and community relationships deepen, opportunities will arise for North Somerset Council to offer the social prescribing elements to link workers, develop health and wellbeing tracking and feedback tools — by working in partnership with NHS partners and wider system stakeholders across the Integrated Care System.

This positions North Somerset’s investment not just as a directory upgrade, but as the foundation of a shared local infrastructure for community health — one that can grow and connect with the wider system, connect with NHS data flows, and provide the evidence base that commissioners, ICBs and national policy increasingly require.

 

The Approach: A Community-Led Infrastructure Model

What distinguishes North Somerset Council’s approach from a conventional technology procurement is what they chose to invest in: not just a platform, but the human infrastructure to
sustain it.
The local authority recognised early that for the service to be sustainable and genuinely effective, it
needed to be embedded within the local community — not managed from a council office. VANS,
as the local community infrastructure organisation, was the natural partner: already trusted by, and
connected to, the VCSE sector across the area.