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Agenda item

Update on the One Croydon Alliance

The One Croydon Alliance Agreement supports the Council’s key strategic priorities with regard to promoting and sustaining independence, well-being and good health outcomes for Croydon residents.

 

Kathy Wocial (Lead for OD, Workforce and Communication for One Croydon Alliance) to present.

Minutes:

The One Croydon Alliance representative began by summarising the purpose of the One Croydon Alliance as a health and care partnership to improve outcomes for people over 65 through greater integration in the commissioning and delivery of services. The officer reminded the Panel that at the last meeting it had been reported that the Cabinet had received and approved a Case for Extension, which extended the Alliance Agreement for another ten years. This went on to be signed on 29 March 2018.

 

The Panel were informed that the LIFE service, which was an integrated re-ablement and rehabilitation service, had been rolled out in September 2017. The service had seen twice as many people as it had been anticipated in the “Out of Hospital” business case. A total of 842 people had been through the service by March 2018, with two thirds of those being over the age of 80. The officer noted that dependency among the clients had been higher than expected, but that hospital and aftercare times had been successfully reduced. The officer told the Panel that more work was needed to integrate the service, highlighting further work to integrate budgets and infrastructure in particular. The officer stated that London Care has now been commissioned as the second new re-ablement service provider to cover the south of the borough. She also reported that the project was working with other boroughs around aligning the “Discharge to Assess” schemes used in different areas to support hospital discharge processes.

 

The officer informed the Panel that a team of 18 Personal Independence Co-ordinators had been recruited and the services had seen over 500 people, and assisted people in achieving over 1300 personal goals. The Service used the Warwick/Edinburgh Tool to assess baseline assessment and progress on wellbeing. Results showed that there had been improvement above the national average amongst those who had received the service and that Healthwatch had undertaken an independent evaluation of the service which had been positive. The Panel were also informed that the multiagency working model of Huddles had been rolled out in collaboration with the six GP service network areas in the borough. The roll out had completed in the south of the borough at the end of March 2018 but there had been hard evidence from the early adopters that the model  had a positive impact on reducing admissions to hospital.

 

The officer outlined the next phase of work for the Alliance. This included a major project to improve working with care homes, in particular the council and the CCG would explore more integrated commissioning. There was also work to improve support to Care Homes, including use of technology and the alignment of GP services to improve health care in care homes, improve care planning and reduce unnecessary hospital visits.

 

Another workstream was reviewing the “Falls Service” including alignment with the LIFE team. In addition to this, there was ongoing work with local communities and the voluntary sector to help promote resilience and self-care. The officer stated that it was hoped this would lead to an overall reduction in hospital and GP visits, and would assist in reducing social isolation.

 

Panel Members enquired as to how successful the Alliance had been in getting partners on board and how this was being monitored. The officer responded that this was dependant on ensuring a long term culture shift took place, but noted that the Alliance had garnered national attention with an article in the Guardian newspaper on the 14 May 2018. Further evidence of this progress could be ascertained from the Local Government Authority interviewing the Alliance as an example of good practise.

 

The Panel asked the officer about the state of social prescribing in the south of the borough. The officer informed the Panel that this had been presented to each GP network, each of which had been allocated their own budget to develop their own models. The effective entrepreneurial model developed in Thornton Heath was highlighted as a success, which had secured additional funding from the private sector. It was hoped that some of the newly introduced areas would be persuaded by this success, but also that the development of the work with active and supportive communities would help achieve similar outcomes in those areas.

 

Councillor Hopley left the meeting at 18:24.