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The purpose of this paper is to investigate health and social care integration in North Wales in a short window of time between the assent of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and its implementation in 2016.

The findings are based on the experiences of health and social care professionals from six Local Authorities and one Regional Health Board working in a management role with strategic responsibility, gathered from an online survey (n=43), semi-structured face-to-face interviews (n=14) and supplemented with reflective interviews with regional coordinators responsible for facilitating cross-organisational working (n=2).

Senior managers are devoting considerable energy to understanding the implications of the new legislation, ensuring that their organisations will be ready and able to successfully implement it. This work is perceived to be commensurate with wider agendas to transform and integrate working practices and services, influenced by a range of financial, environmental, organisational, social and policy factors.

This research has direct implications for stakeholders in North Wales, having already been used to shape conversations about integration in the region, and furthermore builds upon existing knowledge in the academic and professional field of integration, with additional limited wider implications for policy and research.

The purpose of this paper is to outline relevant policies on the integration of health and social care (HSC) in the four home nations: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England and offer a comparison of emphasis and approaches and draw out general insights on the implementation of integrated care policy.

The paper is written as a piece of critical reflection by drawing on the authors’ knowledge and expertise and wider evidence where available.

Since 2010, HSC integration has started to diverge significantly in the four constituent countries of the UK. Although England and Wales have undergone considerable re-organisation of the NHS, Scotland and Northern Ireland have largely been marked by organisational continuity. However, beyond organisational differences, policy approaches, policy emphases and implementation strategies have also started to show considerable dissimilarity across the UK. An important contributory factor may be different ideological perspectives on the role of competition and pilots, partnership, patient choice and organisational incentives to bring about change in the field.

The paper identifies a serious lack of comparative research in integration policy, despite the considerable opportunities for quasi-experimental studies. This lack of empirical research impedes shared learning across the home nations.

The paper presents a descriptive comparison of current integration policy between HSC providers in the four home nations. It reveals considerable opportunities for further research and comparative modelling of integration approaches.

This paper aims to present a review on health and social care service integration, drawing on experience from the United Kingdom, Europe and Canada.

A review of the literature was undertaken and critical summaries of the findings are presented.

It seems no country can put forward a universal set of principles that are applicable in all settings.

Each country has their own challenges, so perhaps this encourages Welsh professionals to learn from their own experience.

This paper adds value by drawing together the literature and providing a contribution from Wales.

There is a fund of practical and theoretical advice on how to work effectively in collaboration, but in reality outcomes are often disappointing. This paper explores aspects that frequently derail well‐intentioned collaborative endeavours, drawing on research on integration in health and social care in Wales to highlight four particular areas of concern: motivation and meaning, capacity and capability, learning, and conceptualising and measuring success. Arguing that better management of these factors should improve overall effectiveness, it concludes with a plea for greater understanding of the complex interplay between structural factors and the influences of individuals.

This article aims to explore how objects function in integration efforts in health and social care contexts.

The article draws on boundary object theory and empirical data collected from a range of health and social care integration initiatives in Wales to illustrate the value of the focus on objects and to identify the potential implications of this approach for studies in other national contexts.

Attention to objects can shed light on the dynamics of integration, its potential and limits, offering insights that conventional analysis might otherwise miss.

The data drawn on in this paper are illustrative. Exploring the role of objects in integration requires more focused studies.

The results suggest that integration designers and managers need to pay closer attention to the attachments that practitioners develop to objects.

This is a highly original paper in view of its innovative use of boundary object theory in the context of integration, and its contribution to theory, research and practice.

It is well recognised that individuals have much to contribute to the care that they receive, with attendant benefits on outcomes and reduction in cost. The recognition of individuals who access care services as interdependent citizens embedded in both formal and informal support networks is a shift that acknowledges their active role as partners in management of their own care and in service innovation and development. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore and illustrate some of the domains of co-production.

In this paper, the authors review the literature, both peer-reviewed and professional, in order to provide a broad and contemporary commentary on this emergent approach. This literature is critically summarised and presented along with a narrative that discusses the context in Wales, where the authors are based. The approach to this paper is to bring together existing knowledge and also propose potential avenues for further research and practise development.

There is a diverse literature on this topic and the application of co-production appears potentially transformational within health and social care. Implementation of the principles of co-production has the potential to improve health and social care services in a range of settings. Real changes in outcomes and experience and reduction in societal cost can be achieved by making the people of Wales active partners in the design and delivery of their own health and social care.

This review offers a readily accessible commentary on co-production, which may be of value to a wide range of professional groups and policy makers. This paper also reflects an original attempt to summarise knowledge and propose further areas for work. Most importantly, this paper offers a start point for co-production to become a reality for service provision with all the attendant benefits that will arise from this development.

The purpose of this paper is to set the context for this special issue and provide an introduction to the individual contributions.

This paper uses a literature survey and analysis.

Integration remains both a central goal and a field of limited but possibly developing achievement. Multiple meanings and usages are themselves sources of confusion and contestability that contribute to poor performance, as does an emphasis on process over outcome. This special issue provides an opportunity for the limitations and possibilities of integration to be explored from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and international settings. Individual papers draw on a wide and innovatory range of theoretical approaches in addressing reasons for limited progress and opportunities for taking it further. Nonetheless, how far we have a good fit between this area of study and the tools we use for its evaluation remains an issue for concern and further exploration.

This editorial is not a systematic review, though it draws on findings from a number of such reviews.

The various contributions all have practical implications for the strategies to develop integration and its evaluation.

The special issue as a whole was designed to encourage fresh perspectives and approaches to be brought to bear on understanding, conducting and evaluating integration. This editorial introduces each of these themes.