Commissioning intentions
Following feedback from Warwickshire residents, our commissioning intentions span five themes.
My home life
Through our Supported Living offer, we will support individuals to own or rent their home, maintain tenancies/ownership, and have control over the support they get, who they live with and how they live their lives. We are committed to aligning our service offer for Supported Living, with the Reach Standards. These standards encourage us to be curious and committed to discovering what a good, ordinary life looks like for each person we support.
We will work with providers to ensure that adults with physical disabilities and / or sensory needs and autistic adults receive personalised and responsive care and support offers to enable access to housing, transportation, and assistive technology which are key to enhancing independence and quality of life. We aim to ensure that Supported Living options include the provision of environments which meet physical or sensory disability needs.
We will support Supported Living providers to develop partnership arrangements with registered housing providers to support our customers to access suitable accommodation.
My work life
We are committed to enhancing employment support for working-age adults. Employment support encompasses a range of services aimed at assisting individuals in finding, securing, and maintaining employment opportunities. This includes job coaching, skills development, vocational training, and support in navigating the job market. We will collaborate with stakeholders, including service users, providers, and community organisation’s, to innovative solutions and strategies that address the specific employment needs of this demographic. Through these efforts, we aim to create a robust and responsive system that promotes inclusivity, independence, and meaningful participation in the workforce for working-age adults with social care needs.
My family life
We want to support carers and ensure they have fulfilled lives. Through our Working Age Adults framework, we will ensure that individuals are supported to access appropriate opportunities for a planned break from their usual routine. This support will recognise the needs of carers and short breaks may be flexible to include support in the individual’s home and/or emergency or planned short breaks or respite to prevent carer breakdown. During 2024/25, we will work with experts by experience and stakeholders to review and recommission the Complex Needs Day Services to ensure continuity of provision when the current contracts end.
We will develop provision and pathways which support people to move from the family home into independent living, in line with their wishes and needs, recognising this might include children and young people approaching adulthood or adults who currently live at home with elderly parents and may be transitioning into supported living for the first time. We will commission support which enables people to develop their independent living skills and will look for evidence that people are being supported to feel confident and happy in developing their independence and a full life in their community.
My healthy lifestyle
We will continue to work with providers to improve health and wellbeing and prevent ill health, including mental health, taking into consideration the recommendations from Warwickshire Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) and learning from lives and deaths – People with a learning disability and autistic people (LeDeR). Providers will support people with learning disabilities or severe and enduring mental illness to access their annual health checks via their GP and will ensure associated health action plans are delivered and hospital passports are kept up to date.
We have an expectation that providers are training staff to understand Learning Disabilities and Autism, this includes completion of Oliver McGowan training.
We aim to provide support for autistic working-age adults and those awaiting a diagnosis within adult social care. This support aims to address the unique needs of individuals awaiting assessment and diagnosis, ensuring they receive timely assistance and resources. Our commitment includes:
- Establishing dedicated services tailored to the specific needs of adults on the autism waiting list, offering support mechanisms such as counselling, vocational training, and social integration programs.
- Collaborating closely with healthcare providers and relevant agencies to streamline the assessment process and reduce waiting times, ensuring individuals receive timely diagnosis and access to appropriate services.
- Developing specialized transition programs to facilitate the smooth transition from the waiting list to formal diagnosis and subsequent support services, focusing on continuity of care and individual empowerment.
- Implementing ongoing training and awareness programs for social care staff to enhance their understanding of autism spectrum disorders and equip them with the necessary skills to provide effective support.
Through these initiatives, we aim to alleviate the challenges faced by individuals on the autism waiting list and empower them to lead fulfilling lives within their communities.
My social life
People have told us that they want to make or maintain friendships and have relationships. We will ensure that support encourages people to develop their interests and hobbies and to make friends, to have relationships and to spend time with the people that are important to them. Our Working Age Adults Framework includes community provision, our expectation is that this provision supports individuals to develop or maintain a social life. During the course of the contract, we will continue to work with customers to understand what is working well and opportunities for our offer to improve.
Broader commissioning intentions
We will continue to work with providers to improve the quality and sufficiency of provision within Warwickshire.
We will commission based on evidenced need for capacity to meet service needs in areas where there is escalating demand or a lack of supply. We are committed to collaborating with providers to understand gaps in provision while developing appropriate solutions by assessing the total available provision and its distribution across the county. We recognise the importance of consistency in the achievement of outcomes, and we will work with care and support providers to achieve this through constant and reliable staffing and support arrangements.
We remain committed to understanding why we place people outside Warwickshire. Our objective is to understand whether this is a result of complex needs or increasing needs beyond Warwickshire’s capacity and to understand whether further market development is needed to address these needs. Collaborating with providers and our operational teams, we aim to gain deeper insights into service gaps and promptly communicate these observations to the market. Through ongoing collaboration with key stakeholders, our focus is on ensuring Warwickshire effectively addresses the diverse needs of its citizens, enabling them to reside locally.
We will commission services that support the council to manage its budgets within available resources and ensure that commissioned provision delivers good value for money.
We will continue to support more people to manage their own budget, giving them choice and control either via a Warwickshire County Council (WCC) and/or NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board (CWICB) Managed Budget (commissioned service), Direct Payments and/or Individual Service Fund.
We are committed to supporting the care market in adopting appropriate digital solutions to improve the quality and safety of care for individuals. When supporting people or giving advice, we will ensure assistive technology is always considered, especially where it can aid mobility to communication devices, navigation assistance, hearing aids, and smart home technology, to empower individuals with disabilities for active community participation and inclusion to support the quality of care and safety for customers.
We are committed to acting decisively to tackle climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Taking action 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 providers to assess and reduce the environmental impact of provision, with a view to agreeing a protocol/ambition which would then form part of our contracts from September 2026.