Agenda item

SUPPORTING INDEPENDENCE: A LOCAL PREVENTION STRATEGY (2023-2027)

To receive the report of Lia Markwick, Lead Accommodation Service Development Manager.

Minutes:

Jon Newton, Service Director, Adults & Older People, introduced the report which provided an update on the development and delivery of Supporting Independence: A Local Prevention Strategy (2023-2027).

 

Lia Markwick, Lead Accommodation Service Development Manager, highlighted key areas of the report, which included the headline priorities for supporting independent living for young people in transition to adulthood, adults (18-64 years) and older people (65 years and over) with adult social care needs in Enfield over a five-year period.

 

Recognising that barriers to living independently reach beyond adult social care, the strategy first considers ‘Universal Themes’ that can impact a person’s opportunity to live independently, including information and advice and health and housing. It also considers growing opportunities to enhance independent living through the use of digital technology- a landscape of opportunity that continues to evolve.

 

The latter section of the strategy focuses on specific priorities for supporting independent living, according to nature of disability or area of need and details of these ‘In Focus’ areas are included in the report. The strategy is intended to complement existing strategies and contribute to a holistic portfolio of documents, that together set out, in partnership with people who need support and their carers, what is needed locally to better support independent living.

 

The Year 1 Action Plan set out key actions to support delivery of priorities from September 2023 to March 2024. An end of year review of Year 1 Action plan has now been completed with the purpose of updating on progress against priorities and identifying the impact of this strategy work. Some key areas progressed under this strategy in Year 1 are set out in the report.

 

Further information was provided on the Universal Priorities including information and advice, the right home, training and employment, technology, active connected and engaged communities. Good progress has been made to increase high quality, accessible housing options for older people with support and care needs in the borough. Reardon Court Extra Care Housing Scheme - which has now opened its doors to new tenants – will offer 70 new homes with the availability of 24-hour on-site care for older people who wish to live independently but may require support and care to do so. Benefits of this type of scheme are cross cutting as it is a good opportunity for an alternative to residential care places and it also has the potential to impact on housing in respect of opportunities to downsize for example from council housing.

 

An update was also provided on the ‘In Focus’ Priorities and it was noted that in Year 1, Enfield exceeded targets for completing annual health checks for people with learning disabilities in the borough, supporting the priority to reduce health inequalities for people with learning disabilities. In 23/24 79% of people with a learning disability had a health check completed.

 

Year 1 also saw the expansion of the number of ‘flexi flats’ available for use within the Extra Care Housing provision from 2 to 7. This provides accessible short stay accommodation for people with care and support needs, including physical disabilities who may require short term housing with care, to enable hospital discharge or prevent the need for residential care. Over 23/24, this provision supported on average 6 individuals per quarter.

 

Questions were invited from the Panel.

 

In response to a Member’s question regarding how the Council promotes independent living for elderly residents in the community, Officers advised that a good example is the Reardon Court Extra Care Housing Scheme as it supports people from residential homes, council homes as well as those individuals who will almost certainly need services shortly, to move into supported community living. So, the model actually provides people who are coming from virtually no support to quite high levels of support.

 

Reference was also made to the Community based and Residential based (nursing and residential homes) budgets and it was noted that the former is going up with the latter going down as less and less people are moving into that institutionalised way of living as more and more people want to live in the community and not in a placement. Therefore, the hope is to introduce more Extra Care Housing Schemes like Reardon Court, however this will take time.

 

In response to Members’ queries regarding the direct payment model, it was advised that this model allows the individual to receive the monies they require to pay for services following a social care assessment. Direct payments aim to give the individual more flexibility in how services are provided and by paying the money directly to the individual instead of care services, they have greater choice and control over their life and can make their own decisions about how their care is delivered.

 

Members asked further questions about work taking place with voluntary and community sector partners and officers advised that Adult Social Care Prevention & Early Intervention contracts have supported the ongoing delivery of priorities in this area over Year 1. Information was provided on outcomes over 2023/24 which included the delivery of support for people with or at risk of Long-Term Conditions to maximise health and wellbeing. Over 23/24 AgeUK ICAN service reached over 3100 people who attended support groups and events. This included five large events and regular peer support groups, such as Tea & Chatter, Stroke Café and Walk and Talk Groups. These services are helping to reach people at risk of loneliness and social isolation. On average across the year, 79% of people surveyed felt less isolated since interaction with the AgeUK ICAN service.

 

Officers further advised that in Year 1 Enfield Carers Centre secured agreement from the GP Federation & Integrated Care Board to proceed with a pilot to improve the identification and support for unpaid carers across five GP surgeries in the borough. The work of the Care Ambassadors has successfully contributed to the identification of unpaid carers over 23/24. Outreach work with primary care and hospitals, has contributed to the identification of a further 757 unpaid carers on Enfield Council’s Carers Register over the year. This has been a hugely important piece of work in understanding and identifying unpaid carers in order to offer information, advice and provide support where needed. This pilot will continue through Year 2 with the view to apply learning and good practice borough wide

 

In response to Member’s questions and comments regarding people with mental health support needs it was advised that in 2023 Enfield submitted one of twelve successful national bids to pilot an Individual Placement Support (IPS) model in Primary Care. The aim of this pilot was to support over 1500 people into work or prevent them from losing employment due to health conditions. The pilot has attracted £3.25m of DWP funding for delivery. Since the project started in October 2023 the Enfield and Haringey initiative has supported over 887 people, enabled over 114 new job starts and over 45 returns to work.

 

In response to a question regarding whether the strategy reflects and reaches those who need it, Officers advised that a lot of work had gone into the development of the strategy to ensure that the voices of those people who use the services and unpaid carers were heard and this was achieved by holding various focus groups which involved over 50 organisations and individuals and therefore it is hoped that the strategy is a very focused document. Officers added that consulting on the delivery of the strategy will always be key, and this will be done through the action plans as well as ongoing engagement with partnership boards to review progress and shape future actions for delivery with people who use services and their carers.

 

The Chair referred to the Draft Local Plan and felt that there was a significant gap in it with regards to the need for more places like Reardon Court and similar Extra Care Housing schemes. Officers explained that from a Social Care perspective, they do regularly feed into the development of planning documents and provide needs data on the older persons’ population in the Borough. In terms of more Extra Care Housing provision, from a population perspective more was needed locally as it is one of a number of options for older people looking for accommodation with a bit of extra support therefore a continued conversation around this issue is needed.

 

The Chair responded by saying that given that the Draft Local Plan has another hearing in public it would be useful if the responsible Directors provided input at this stage as there is still time to shape the Local Plan. He added that there is great virtue in supported living as it takes the strain off health services, provides better, healthier living conditions for people who make use of it and it frees up properties that can provide family homes for those that need it, therefore it was important to address this issue as a Council.

Supporting documents: