As a worldwide trend in health care and social care, new organizational arrangements and care perspectives focus on more coordinated and integrated forms of care.Based upon a framework of human rights and social justice, an innovative Integrated Care Model is developed within health and social care (IC-model). This framework is acknowledged in both scientific papers (Lloyd & Wait, 2005) and international policy documents, including WHO-declarations (WHO, 2008).The innovative Integrated Care Model is developed as an alternative for the actual highly fragmented care delivery and the recently growing interplay between social care and health care (Enthoven, 2009). This framework is characterized by an integration of both social and health care perspectives. the IC-model is based on the centredness and holistic view of the patient (cf. ICF-model) (Kodner & Spreeuwenberg, 2002; Ouwens, 2005). In this view, well-being of people is considered as a combination of physical, psychological and social aspects of well-being. In this model, professionals’ responses to the patient requests are always shaped by these different perspectives. In order to successfully implement the IC-model, interprofessional collaboration, including interprofessional analyses of care questions and problems, is needed (Suter et al., 2009).In our presentation we will discuss how health and welfare issues are often intertwined and give form to different perspectives on care, and how the IC-model can contribute to continuity of care. This will be illustrated by using data of an ongoing research project in Flanders (Belgium), where the ‘Integrated primary care’ approach is studied in the context of community-oriented primary health care. In this study, researchers from various academic disciplines (welfare and health) are involved. Based on ethnographic research methodology, three particular community health centres in Flanders are studied. In this presentation we will present preliminary findings of this research project, with a focus on the “multiperspective character” in conducting the Integrated Care Model.
