The KCC vision is to deliver high quality services which “Help people to improve or maintain their well-being and to live as independently as possible”.
There are 1.54million people living in Kent, of these 36,641 are supported by Adult Social Care with 20,355 over the age of 65. Of those aged between 18 and 64 supported by Adult Social Care there are currently 5370 people with a physical disability, 4720 with a learning disability and 4863 with mental health issues. It has been forecast that there will be a 57.5% increase in the population of those aged over 65 between 2015 and 2035. (Kent Local Account 2017)
The pressure that this increased rise in demand generated led to the launch of “Your Life Your Wellbeing” in 2016, a vision and strategy for adult social care to be delivered over five years.
The strategy breaks down our approach to adult social care into three themes that cover the whole range of services provided for people with social care and support needs and their carers:
Promoting wellbeing – supporting and encouraging people to look after their health and well-being to avoid or delay them needing adult social care
Promoting independence – providing short-term support so that people are then able to carry on with their lives as independently as possible
Supporting independence – for people who need ongoing social care support, helping them to live the life they want to live, in their own homes where possible, and do as much for themselves as they can.
The strategy also details what Kent County Council must have in place in order to achieve the vision; effective protection (safeguarding), a flexible workforce, smarter commissioning and improved partnership working
Due to the scale of transformation required to deliver the strategy the overall programme of work was broken down in to multiple phases to ensure change was delivered in a controlled and sustainable way.
One example of the changes delivered is “Acute Hospital Optimisation”. We assessed the placements at the end of acute stays, and identified that in 11% of cases residential placements were inappropriate. Through the assessment we were able to identify the biggest drivers, which were ‘incorrect decisions by the hospital discharge teams’ and ‘pressure from the family of the service users’. Knowing this provided the starting point for a Design phase during which one of the hospital discharge teams were empowered to identify the changes that they wanted to make in order to get it right for service users every time. The team were provided with the time, training and visibility required to deliver the changes. As the results started to come through the changes were rolled out to the other Acute hospitals in Kent, and by the end of the year 370 additional service users were able to go to their own bed at the end of their acute stay rather than a residential placement. This was a 59% reduction in Long Term Beds and a 54% reduction in Short Term Beds.
Submitted by PaulaParker [email protected]