Improving information sharing between health and social care is critical to professionals who care for people and the health and wellbeing of people themselves.

The information provided by local authorities in shared care records is the important details that the local authority holds about people that would be useful for health and care professionals in providing care and support in hospital, at home or in a care home.

This standard is designed to improve communication between local authorities and healthcare providers. It supports healthcare providers to identify a person’s responsible local authority and makes sure that timely and relevant information about a person held by the local authority is accessible to healthcare professionals in primary, secondary and community care.

This standard includes details of the person’s local authority, services and care packages, safeguarding and legal information, primary support reason, equipment and adaptations and assessments undertaken and other local authority held information relevant to direct care. This project supports NHS England’s interoperability efforts and is part of a wider set of standards, originally published in November 2020, created for sharing information between health and social care and drawing on the learning from successful local projects to speed up national roll out and adoption.

• Enhances timely professional access to clinically relevant local authority information, such as care packages, primary support reason, safeguarding, personal/ professional contacts and equipment, to support direct clinical care and reducing the burden on the person to tell their story more than once.
• Supports integrated care across health and social care settings.

• A definition of the information held by local authorities that healthcare professionals need to see in a shared care record to support direct clinical care
• Use as a blueprint for individual local authorities to use as a minimum data set and add to, if necessary, to meet local requirements

• Information about the person contributed from healthcare to shared care records of interest to local authorities
• Information about the person not held by local authorities
• An exhaustive definition of all the items recorded by local authorities in the UK relating to health and social care

The Information Provided by Local Authorities in Shared Care Records standard operates by ensuring that all relevant information is recorded and shared in a structured format. This facilitates seamless communication and continuity of care across different health and social care settings.