New Era in Social Care and Health - Latest

Service Redesign

Individual Budgets - this project will lead the work to introduce Individual Budgets in the County. Learning from the work of the national pilots and supported by CSIP we are in the process of finalising our project plan. This is likely to propose a phased implementation over 2008/9/10
Day Services - this project will ensure people are able to access a range of day time opportunities and receive support to access all available community resources; essentially it's the co-ordination of the conversation process already underway with day service and day centre users and carers and with partners and local communities.
Transport - this project will review current transport arrangements to ensure the Directorate routinely provides support for people to access personalised public and private transport arrangements and arranges suitable alternatives where this is not possible.

Employment - this project will ensure that the Council employs more people with disabilities in paid work and also ensures greater numbers of people with disabilities have access to supported work placements as a pre-cursor to paid work. It will in particular review the supported employment projects currently provided by Stoke City Council.
Organisational Development - this project will ensure that the organisational development needs arising from the 8 Change Programmes are addressed. While the project sits in Service Redesign, it will have a remit across the 8 programme Boards

Older People

We have 4 main projects, plus we are involving older people across the county in accordance with "Better Govt for OP" principles is being picked up by the Carers Programme - now that it has absorbed work on User/Carers.

OP residential - ensure sufficient independent sector res care of good value and high quality in each district, supporting a wide range of community based services; ensure delivery of managed reduction in in-house capacity. AL is DD lead.
Extra care - increase availability of EC housing and services in each district, with at least one new EC service open in each district by April 2010, and within context of a long-term (10 year) procurement and commissioning strategy. AL is DD lead.
OP Mental Health - work with NHS to deliver integrated health and social care services (e.g. specialist res/nursing/home care provision, integrated care planning and assessment) to support OP with mental health issues to live as independently as possible. MF is DD lead.
Home Care - develop in-house specialist services, manage reduction in in-house volume, and develop wider market in relation e.g. dignity in care, telecare, etc. MF is DD lead.

Mental Health

Establish an integrated community MH service with the NHS Provider Trusts covered by (a) section 75 agreement(s), by April 2008, incorporating social work and other current SCH MH services. To cover working age adults initially.
Develop a new protocol/procedure for undertaking the statutory function of Approved Social Work in light of new legislative guidance and the new integrated services.

Customer Journey

There are three main projects:

Design and implement a consistent and high quality contact service where 80% of enquiries are resolved at first point of contact
To create a new assessment toolkit, with standards, based on best practice and established assessment systems across the country, which is proportionate, timely and cost effective in meeting people's needs. It will also be suitable for self assessment, personalisation, simple through to complex cases, and cover equipment/adaptations.
To commence the financial assessment at the first point of contact and give an estimate of the costs of care in accordance with CSED good practice guidance.

Physical and Sensory Impairment

This Programme Board brings together 4 projects aimed at delivering the modernisation of services for people with physical and sensory impairment:

Supported Housing: this project will develop and implement a range of options to assist people with disabilities to access independent living opportunities. This will include developing local needs predications, putting in place procedures to ensure that Housing Options Plans are in place for all customers and developing a model for housing brokerage. This project covers people with learning disability also.

Community Equipment: this project will develop processes that enable improved equipment delivery and which facilitate a range of options for customers, improve performance and efficiency and reduce waiting times, including producing guidance for practitioners to facilitate self assessment for aids and equipment,, reviewing existing scheme of delegation to enable the assessment and provision of aids and equipment by a wider staff group 03/08, agreeing S75 agreements/service level agreements with health partners regarding an integrated community equipment service 10/08

Assistive Technology: this project will develop a range of supportive technology solutions to enable people to live independently. This will include overseeing the district contracts now being agreed following the failure to let a county-wide contract, and the development of a strategic plan following an assessment of the respective needs for county and district solutions

Out of County Placements: this project will lead the programme of work needed to support the return of people currently placed out of county to Staffordshire with appropriate care and support packages to meet their needs.

Learning Disabilities

We have a total of six projects covering learning disabilities. We recognise that these projects need to be closely aligned in order to meet the needs of people currently in our services and future service users. Darren Evans is leading this work alongside Julian Wakefield (Interim Commissioning Manager for Learning Disabilities) to develop a joint commissioning strategy with the P.C.T. and to co-ordinate our work on these six projects so that the services we deliver are complimentary. The six projects are:-

1. In House Residential

We have 13 homes with 180 people in them. The majority of these homes are in a poor state of repair and are run using a quite traditional model. We are looking to develop a supported living approach to meet these peoples' future housing needs.

2. NHS Campus

As you will be aware NHS Campuses need to be decommissioned by 2010. Health currently has 13 properties (9 in the north, 4 in the south, with a population of 49 people in the north and 18 people in the south). The aim of this project is to close down the NHS campuses and re-provide accommodation for these 67 people.

3. Mencap Properties (Ex Stallington)

There are 4 units with 50 people living in those units. We have agreed with Mencap that this service is not meeting the needs of the people using the service. Again we will re-provide accommodation for the people living in these units in similar ways as for people using our in-house accommodation and the NHS campus accommodation.

4. Short Breaks

A short breaks service is currently provided from 6 buildings supporting approximately 200 Staffordshire residents. This service is therefore only available to a small fraction of the people that we should be serving. The plan is to reduce the current 6 buildings down to 4. We plan to work with Mencap to deliver community short breaks and go out to tender to expand our adult placement scheme.

5. Transitions

It is clear that we need to work more closely with our colleagues in Children and Lifelong Learning around the Transitions agenda. We now have Transition Workers in place in most districts of the county who will be working with young people and Children and Lifelong Learning from the age of 14. The aims of this project are to ensure a smooth transition to adult life involving self assessment/self directed care, direct payments and individual budgets. Among the key areas where we need to support these young people are a place to live and employment.

6. Out of County Placements

We currently have over 100 people with a learning disability placed outside the county. These placements are necessary at the moment but unsatisfactory in that they involve moving people away from 'home' (the areas where their families live) and that they are expensive. We need to look closely at these placements and see whether people in these circumstances can be brought back to Staffordshire, closer to home. In order to do this we need to make sure that we have a range of options available to them that are currently not in place.

As you will see from the above, the Learning Disabilities Agenda for Staffordshire is huge. The work we are doing in learning disabilities is emblematic of our whole approach in Changing Lives. We need to develop a range of options for people with a learning disability to give them choice and control using individualised budgets and direct payments, in order to allow them to make decisions about the services that they want.

Carers

The role of Carers has been identified as a key priority for the County Council. We are all aware of the excellent work that carers do and our need to support them is well recognised. We are doing a lot of work at the moment with the Carers Board in order that we can better understand the needs of carers and support them more effectively.

As you will be aware it is Carers' Rights Day on 07 December 2007 and there are a wide range of partnership activities that we are involved in on that day to promote the role of carers.

We are further recognising the role of carers by increasing the profile of carers' assessments (something that needs to be a priority when clients' assessments are being undertaken) and by prioritising the use of carers' grants.

This is an area that is developing quickly and is an exciting area to be involved in.

NHS and Strategic Partnerships

In our programme on NHS and strategic partnerships we currently have four projects that are inter-related. These outcomes of these projects will be a single agreement with supporting protocols signed up to by Social Care and Health, the two Primary Care Trusts and other NHS partners where appropriate.

The four projects are:

The discharge arrangements agreement will define how the partner agencies will work with people, families and with each other to manage the customer journey from home, through the hospital system, and back into the community. It will define protocols, timescales and communication and recording systems. The three agreements below will be key elements of the discharge arrangements agreement.

The Continuing Care agreement will define how the partner agencies will work with people, families and with each other to manage continuing care arrangements.

The Intermediate Care agreement will define how the partner agencies will work with people, families and with each other to manage services that act as an alternative to hospital admission and act as a bridge between hospital and home.

The Medicines management will define how the partner agencies will work with people, families and with each other to manage medication throughout their journey in the health and social care system.

These agreements will be completed and signed off by the partner agencies by the end of March 2008.

Last Modified: 18/04/2008 08:34:08
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