Agenda item

The Area Board received a presentation from Lucy Stansfield, Head of Service, regarding the help available to enable older people to remain in their homes for as long as possible.

The presentation covered the following points:

A recent consultation had identified the following issues:

• Too many organisations – too much choice
• Too difficult to know where to get help when it is needed
• Lots of money wasted from duplication
• Concern about crises at night
• Importance of “that little bit of help”
• Loneliness and isolation
• People going into care homes who would rather be at home

People in Corsham previously had the following support:

·         Domiciliary care – 120 organisations

·         Housing related support –20  organisations

·         Equipment – 5 organisations

·         Voluntary and community sector – 1000’s

The local picture was:

• Number of care home beds – 106 (Hungerford House – Order of St John’s, Claremont House, Bybrook House)
• Number of sheltered housing units – 142    (Waverley Court, Holton House, Jargeau Court)
• Number of extra care units – 0
• Number of people receiving domiciliary care at home in Corsham (SN13) – 27 

·         Corsham Area (SN13, SN14, SN15) - 155

• Community organisations – parish councils, voluntary sector, good neighbours

What are the Council and NHS doing about this?

• Commissioning a new service for people at home
• Developing telecare and Response service
• Commissioning a new equipment and practical help service
• Improving access to information, advice and support
• Reducing the number of footsteps to people’s front door, by bringing together multiple services into a single service.

Help to live at home would mean:

• Assuming most people want to be independent and manage without help
• 4 organisations rather than 120 – Complete Care

• Joint with the NHS
• Not just domiciliary care
• Doing things that customers want
• Making good use of community resources
• Enabling people to have a life
• Professional care and support staff able to provide a wider range of services

What will be better?

• For the Customer
• One service for care
• Response service 24 hours a day
• “that little bit of help”
• One equipment service
• Same service for whole population
• Greater independence

• For the Council
• Improved service
• Reduced wastage
• Less back office inputs
• Savings from economies of scale
• Reduced travel
• Sustainable model of care

What is happening now?

• New care and support organisation appointed for new customers since 3 September 2011
• Customers changing providers
• Sheltered housing and extra care schemes – staff changing employers
• Equipment contract being evaluated
• Response service being negotiated

The following issues were then discussed:

·         There would be a single telephone number and single point of contact for the help to live at home service.

·         The process used to award the contracts to service providers took into account quality and price.

·         There would be four main providers and this would lead to more consistency for users of the service rather than different people coming into homes each day.

·         The service also took into account the need for older people to have a social life.

·         There would be continuous review of the contracts which had been awarded for 5 years with a possible 2 year extension.

·         People with savings of over £23,250 would have to contribute towards the cost of their care.

·         The package of care provided would be discussed with the user of the service and would be more flexible than it had been in the past.

·         There would be targets set for the care providers.

·         Technology would also be available to monitor who had visited the house to provide care.

·         People interested in finding out more about the service could ring Wiltshire Council on 01225 713000 and ask for the Social Care Helpdesk.

·         The contribution of unpaid carers was acknowledged and it was noted that the Council had invested £28 million into the voluntary sector to support them.