Directors’ Briefings sessions success

MORE THAN 100 SENIOR LEADERS IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE ATTENDED IESE’S RECENT DIRECTORS’ BRIEFING FORUMS, WITH ALL PARTICIPANTS WHO COMPLETED FEEDBACK FORMS RATING THE SESSIONS AS EITHER ‘VERY’ OR ‘EXTREMELY’ INFORMATIVE.

iESE hosted six one-hour Directors’ Briefing online sessions free to attendees in February this year. Every session covered the same content but gave participants a choice of dates and times. This is the second time iESE has held these events but now plans to run them more frequently in response to participant feedback.

The sessions, which were attended by senior leaders from 51 separate local authorities, aimed to outline the current situation for adult and children’s social care and the challenges faced by senior leaders. Potential solutions were outlined, including the iESE care commissioning CareCubed tool, which is already used by more than 50 per cent of UK councils. Attendees heard case studies of how the tool is helping local authority leaders meet their care challenges in both the adult and children’s markets.

The sessions, which were hosted by Craig White and Nik Jones from iESE, talked attendees through the current state of the market. “We looked at the fact that demand for social care has increased and is outstripping supply. There are increasing backlogs with more than half a million people waiting for care assessments across the country, which is up 24 per cent more than last year, and the number of people who have waited for six months has gone up by 97 per cent. Requests for care have gone up by 170 per day compared with last year. There are also 165,000 positions not filled in the care sector and staff turnover is at 35 per cent,” explained Nik Jones, Sales Executive at iESE. “While this paints quite a bleak picture, the iESE care commissioning tool CareCubed can help with these challenges. It is a tactical day-to-day commissioning tool but also has strategic uses which are key for directors. Among other benefits, leaders can run full costs of care exercises through the tool, carry out retrospective market analysis and help keep care local through new service design or redesign. The tool gives directors the ability to shape their market through modelling new services within the system which might be done in conjunction with a strategic partner or inhouse, reducing the risk hugely for all stakeholders. By using CareCubed you can see and start to fill gaps in your market,” Jones added. The sessions also looked at uplift requests and the ability of the CareCubed tool to track the market and actual costs in real time through the regularly updated data which sits behind the tool, such as National Living Wage costs and inflation data. Due to these regular updates and continued investment and improvement of the tool by iESE, CareCubed can provide powerful evidence for commissioners to negotiate effectively with providers whilst understanding what sustainable costs of care are in the market.

Those who attended the session were able book a one-to-one with iESE to discuss their care challenges and how CareCubed can help address them. This offer is also open to any other interested parties by contacting iESE directly.

• To find out more about CareCubed or to book a one-to-one session with iESE please contact: craig.white@iese.org.uk