Commissioning intentions
We will continue to work towards appropriate policies and strategies to address the needs of the population aged 65 and over in Warwickshire, including provisions for healthcare, social care, and housing, to ensure that they can continue to live fulfilling lives as they age.
While there is strong market growth in Warwickshire, new homes typically provide services with prices at the upper end of the market. We would welcome approaches from providers who can offer rates that support the council to manage its budgets within available resources. We would also like to explore opportunities for joint capital projects which would also create capacity for services that are more affordable for social care funded customers.
We are committed to supporting the care market in working more digitally and adopting technologies to improve the quality and safety of care for their residents.
When supporting people or giving advice, we will ensure assistive technology is always considered, especially where it can improve hydration; reduce medication errors; reduce falls; support those with learning disabilities; support those with dementia; and support carers. We will continue to support care providers to maximise their use of assistive technology to ensure the quality of care and safety for customers.
We are committed to working in partnership with colleagues in the ICB to promote and develop Enhanced Health in Care Homes (EHCH) schemes and initiatives that benefit care homes. To date initiatives have included: Red Bags scheme; NHS Data Security and nhs.net emails; Digital Transformation Fund; NECSU Capacity Tracker; Remote Monitoring; and Assistive Technology. This includes promoting and supporting the rollout of digital monitoring tools, adopting digital social care records (DSCR), sensor-based falls prevention and detection technologies, and other technologies based on local need and what works for providers. Where possible, Warwickshire will also support providers with access to relevant funding and training and support to make the best use of these technologies.
We are committed to acting decisively to tackle climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Acting now, so that we are a county with a sustainable future, is one of the key strategic priorities in the Council Plan. We have already started work towards our goals of reducing carbon emissions to net zero across the council by 2030 and to support us as a county to do the same by 2050 or earlier. We will be working with care home providers to assess and reduce the environmental impact of care homes, with a view to agreeing a protocol/ambition which would then form part of our contracts from September 2026.
We will commission to meet service gaps in areas where there is escalating demand or a lack of supply. We are committed to collaborating with providers to assess the level of demand and formulate responsive strategies to bridge these gaps both in the medium and long term, by assessing the total available provision and its distribution across the county:
- Dementia - with the rising number of individuals living with dementia, the need for quality dementia care is essential. It is crucial to provide specialised dementia beds, especially for those facing greater challenges along with focusing on public awareness, ensuring timely diagnosis and enhancing care access and support for affected individuals and their families.
- Complex needs – where there is limited availability of care home options in the county to support residents with more complex needs, such as those requiring Section 117 Mental Health aftercare or intensive dementia care.
- In county - our goal is to ensure that all residents can access quality care within our county, eliminating the need to place individuals outside of our community
We will continue to seek opportunities to commission care home beds on block contracts. Block contracts can be an appropriate way of sharing risk and getting best value from available public funding. They create secure and predictable funding for providers and certain levels of supply at agreed rates for the commissioner. We will be approaching the market with the ICB to explore how block contracting of care and nursing home beds could be expanded and would be interested to hear providers’ views on this approach.
We will continue to support the local health and care system to maximise hospital bed capacity, by carrying out assessments in ‘discharge to assess’ beds out of hospital or in other community settings. This will enable patients to move out of the hospital into short term recovery environment where they can be supported with therapy and reablement services and help them and reduce their long-term needs for care and support.
We will continue to work with providers to improve health and wellbeing and prevent ill health for older people, building on the recommendations in the Warwickshire Healthy Ageing JSNA. Conditions that most impact on health in later life for Warwickshire residents include cancer. Ischaemic heart disease and dementia; back pain, hearing loss, diabetes, falls and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).