Better links between City of York Council and its local primary care trust in developing older people's services will be considered at a meeting later this month.

A meeting of the Council's Adult Social Services and Advisory Panel on 29 October will look at more joint working arrangements with the North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) to improve services for older people.

A report outlining initiatives already in progress will be presented to the meeting and members will seek agreement in principle to a proposed approach to develop joint commissioning arrangements with the PCT.

In January this year the Council agreed a long term commissioning strategy for older people which recognised that the needs of older people were changing and that numbers of older people in the city were increasing. The strategy highlighted the need to do more to improve services for older people and made it clear that joint working with local health services was needed.

Good progress has been made to agree an approach to joint commissioning with the PCT and work is in progress to agree joint priorities which can be included in the long term strategy.

The report recommends that members agree in principle to the joint priorities and proposed joint arrangements with the PCT to deliver these.