Adult social care strategy
Our duties and responsibilities are determined by national legislation and the three important pieces of legislation which guide our work are the Care Act 2014, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the Mental Health Act 1983. Additionally, the Government has set out its plans and wide-ranging reforms for health and social care, through ‘Build Back Better’, ‘People at the Heart of Care’ and more recently ‘Next steps to put People at the Heart of Care’.
We are currently in the process of writing our Adult Social Care Strategy. This document will both articulate what we are currently doing to deliver our Adult Social Care responsibilities, and areas which we need to strengthen to keep our population safe, well and independent for as long as possible. This section of our MPS will be updated early in 2024, once we have finalised this document by coproducing it with Social Care staff and engaging with our customers. Our draft document outlines our strengths and conversely where we should like to strengthen our offer.
Current strengths
Strength-based practice has been identified as being particularly good in Warwickshire and was highlighted in our recent Peer review. This way of working builds on the established assets in people’s lives, families, and communities to deliver the best outcomes for our customers.
The WCC (Warwickshire County Council) Learning and Development (L and D) team will continue to work closely with providers to support the training and development of the provider workforce. They offer training assessments to identify training needs amongst staff and work with providers to access the identified and required training. They both commission and deliver training for providers and utilise a webbased Learning and Development platform (Scils). This supports transferability of training, reduces re-training and concentrates on personal development needs.
Our Residential Care providers have made great advances in the use of technology to support customers maintain their independence and we want to learn from and share this across our market. We will continue to work with partners and providers to consider how assistive technology and digital solutions can support the efficiency of adult social care delivery.
Partnership working both with other statutory bodies and within WCC between Adult Social Care and Strategy and Commissioning is strong.
We have an integrated Adult Mental Health service with the NHS that results in a joined-up service provision to our customers with Mental Health Needs.
Areas for development
We have started work on improving our information offer and digital interface and we will be looking regionally and nationally at authorities who do this well. If potential customers, friends and relatives can access the information they need easily and can also self-serve to understand what is available to meet their needs, then they might access non statutory community resources to help themselves. This will help people stay well and independent for longer.
We will continue to explore the role technology can play in supporting customers to remain independent or obtain independence and take advantage of opportunities arising from the rapid advancements in technology.
During Covid and since its decline we have seen an increase in sustained care post hospital discharge, as such we are developing short term recovery and reablement support, both bedded and within the community, to help people to reduce their long-term needs for care and support.
We will continue to work closely with Housing Authorities in the county to progress the development of Housing with Care schemes to create good quality, affordable housing options as alternatives to residential care for those with some care needs.
We will seek to encourage the development of a diverse market and promote opportunities for providers in the third sector, particularly social and microenterprises that can develop and offer alternatives to traditional support services. We will also look at ways of maximising community-based services and the voluntary sector to deliver services that support, and compliment commissioned services.
In line with Warwickshire’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy, we will take a Health in All Policies approach to make health everyone’s business, in particular helping people to improve their mental health and wellbeing and reducing inequalities in health outcomes and the wider determinants of health. It is recognised that all staff and services have a role to play in supporting good health and wellbeing. A Making Every Contact Count (MECC) approach is being rolled out across the Council and commissioned partners to deliver key messages and signposting to health and wellbeing support.
An Ageing Well Joint Strategic Needs Analysis (JSNA) will be published in early 2024 which will outline the priorities for preventing ill health in later life.