Transformation in Health and Social Care Award Winners 2023

This year’s iESE Awards attracted unprecedented levels of entries, with 294 submissions received from 76 public sector organisations across the UK and overseas. Here, we give an overview of three enterprising health and social care initiatives from the winners in the Transformation in Health and Social Care Award category.

Gold Award Winner: Isle of Wight Council (IOW)

The Isle of Wight’s Living Well and Early Help Service, delivered by Aspire Ryde and their community partners and jointly commissioned by the Island’s unitary authority and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board, took Gold in the Transformation in Health and Social Care Award category.

Designed to reduce the need for statutory intervention, the service is delivered by local people, for local people and provides both proactive and reactive help and support. The community-led approach empowers people to maximise their independence and is delivering results, including improved wellbeing, individual and community resilience, more sustainable community support and reduced demand on statutory services.

The original Living Well Service was established in 2017. Following a review in 20/21, a new service specification was co-produced and a new delivery partner, Aspire Ryde, was appointed in March 2022. The review, which included looking at Adult Social Care (ASC) demand data, identified that more than 55 per cent of older people living on the island did not meet the threshold to receive council-funded ASC. In addition, it found approximately 40 per cent of local people approaching ASC were deemed not eligible. They were then being signposted to various other organisations but inevitably returned to ASC in the future, with reduced wellbeing, unable to able to live well independently in their communities and own homes. This often led to these individuals requiring statutory service intervention, often with higher care needs sooner in their care journey.

The review also identified several challenges highlighted by people who draw on care and support services, including the need for support for the weekends, a desire for face-to-face contact within their own community and not just office-based or telephone support, a need for help with finances, paperwork, benefit claims and accessing equipment to help them live more independently and guidance around property adaptations to make living at home easier. Local people also said they wanted an electronic referral form which could be shared between organisations to avoid having to repeat their story.

The new Living Well and Early Help Service, which is accessible to all IOW residents through four key geographic locations and to rural localities though a mobile support hub, went live on 1st April 2022. Of the 2,389 people supported so far, less than one per cent have been referred for statutory service intervention. Help can include anything from social contact and building people’s support circles, to referrals into community groups nearby or linking them with the job centre, housing support, health and social care assistance or cost of living help, for example.

The service provides wraparound support and engages the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprises (VCSEs), Town, Parish and Community Councils. Through all partners working collaboratively, people who may previously have been passed from ‘pillar to post’ are now supported seamlessly. The service has been delivered at a time when health and social care funding is under greater pressure to deliver and maximise value. Without this initiative there may otherwise have been reductions in non-statutory spend, but the island’s health and care system took the decision to maintain and align joint funding to sustain a community model of support.

Local people are now being looked at holistically rather than the historic approach of separate services commissioned by each organisation, bringing an added benefit of removal of duplication of resources and better investment of limited public funds.

While it is still early days, the service is already demonstrating significant impact. Users report that they feel more confident, can manage their own care, and feel much more part of their community and not a burden upon it. There are numerous examples, such as a lady with a physically disability who first contacted the service about her electricity arrears. Having been supported she is now setting up a sewing group for others in her community to help reduce isolation and loneliness. Another lady with severe depression and anxiety was referred to the Living Well and Early Help Service. Following community support she has been helped to visit the job centre, apply for Personal Independence Payments and universal credit and has begun socialising.

Laura Gaudion, Director of Adult Social Care and Housing Needs at the Isle of Wight Council, said: “This is such a well-deserved accolade for a team that has truly put the community at the heart of their work. This is an outstanding service that empowers people to maximise their independence, while reducing the need for statutory interventions.

“The service has had significant impact with less than one per cent of the people it is supporting needing help from statutory services. We will see it change and grow to meet our local demands as they evolve. The service is now linked up to give debt advice, for example, which it was never intended to do. It is about building on what we have got, continuing to grow in that offer and equally investing in making sure we don’t just hear from the people we hear from. We want to ensure we reach people through a different route who ordinarily might not chose to engage with ASC services,” she said.

Trevor Nicholas, chief executive of Aspire Ryde, said: “This award is a testament to the close working between the Isle of Wight Council, the NHS and voluntary sector partners and it’s wonderful to have this recognised at a national level. We are really proud of our whole team who have worked so hard to achieve our vision for the service.”

• To find out more about the Living Well and Early Help Partnership visit lweh.org.uk

Silver Award: Insight Bristol Hub at Bristol City Council

The Insight Bristol team at Bristol City Council (BCC) were awarded Silver in the Health and Social Care category for two initiatives which help safeguarding experts to speedily identify those most in need.

The work of BCC Insight’s team builds on a project called the Think Family Database which was recognised at a previous iESE Transform Awards in 2018. The initiatives awarded this year, called Think Family Notifications and the Think Family Education app, build on BCC’s success with its Think Family Database.

The Think Family Database pulls together data from around 60 different public sector sources to create a rich and diverse dataset covering the 54,000 families across Bristol. The database is used to assist a range of public sector safeguarding staff within the local authority and helps to identify ‘at risk’ families and better coordinate their support.

In December 2021, the team began working on two linked projects to further enhance the Think Family Database: Think Family Notifications and the Think Family Education app. Key partners include education settings across Bristol and Avon and Somerset Police but information is also received from other partners across Bristol.

Think Family Notifications aims to change the way lead professionals receive information about critical events occurring in a child’s life so that they can proactively respond to the event. The Think Family Education app facilitates data sharing and information flow from partners to the local authority and then into school settings, highlighting daily when a critical event has occurred for a child. The aim behind both projects is to change working practice and begin to use data in a time efficient manner to influence proactive earlier help and improve outcomes for families.

A significant part of the project has focused on information governance. During the last 12 months the governance documents have been reviewed by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). Engagement with parent teacher panels and school governors have been completed and schools are communicating with all parents around the use of the data.

There has been positive feedback from practitioners who have said that without receiving the notification they would not have been made aware of a critical event. For example, a critical event occurred for a child in one of the schools within days of the Think Family Education app roll out. The information the app shared resulted in an emergency case review which pulled all services and the team around a family together. Feedback from the school was that if this had occurred the week prior, they would have not been able to act and ‘potentially would not have known about the incident.’

Fiona Tudge, Director of Children and Families at Bristol City Council, said: “The work of the project has been ground-breaking in providing direct access to real-time multi-agency safeguarding information. This has helped professionals become aware of information they would not have otherwise known and contributes to a joined up and combined approach to supporting the vulnerable children. At a time when resources are severely stretched it has helped reduce the retrieval burden for professionals.”

The work is nationally recognised with Bristol supporting many local authorities to develop their thinking, presenting to at least 20 other local authorities and government departments in the last six months. The Department for Education has recently awarded the team further funding to develop other apps specific to Social Care, which will be built and documented so that they can be replicated across the country. Funding has also been awarded to set out a national information sharing framework to help facilitate other authorities to join the journey. Furthermore, the work has also been used as a case study in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

Tim Fletcher, Data Analytics Manager at Bristol City Council, said: “It’s great to keep this innovation at the forefront of our work. This joined up pioneering approach of connecting services is now being rolled out corporately to services across the local authority.”

Kelvin Graham, Insight Bristol Hub Manager at Bristol City Council, added: “For the team to be recognised nationally for the work that we are doing is rewarding. This recognition supports conversations with partners to share information and encourage a connected multi-agency approach to data sharing.”

• Read more about the Insight Hub here: www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/social-care-andhealth/children-and-families/insight-bristol

Bronze Award: Kent County Council

Kent County Council won the iESE Bronze Award in the Transformation in Health and Social Care category for its work in growing the support available to its residents through Community MicroEnterprises.

As part of its Adult Social Care Strategy 2022-2027, Making a difference every day, Kent County Council (KCC) wanted to further support older people, people with a disability (both learning and physical) and people wanting to improve their mental health and wellbeing. The desire was to provide these residents with a range of options to choose from and work with to achieve the outcomes that matter to them. A review found these options were not immediately available or visible, leading KCC to invest in its community offer to sit alongside the current commissioned care and support services.

Since January 2022, KCC has been working with Community Catalysts (CICs) to support local people in Kent to set up and run Community Micro-Enterprises (CMEs). A CME is an initiative which supports people within their community with eight or fewer full-time staff or volunteers and which is independent of any larger organisation. They offer a truly local and personcentred approach that is more rewarding for the people delivering and receiving the services. The services provided vary from people delivering care and support in a resident’s own home to community activities like music classes for people with learning disabilities. In addition to receiving the support required, people are also improving their links to their local communities and enabled to feel more in control of their own care.

KCC has four catalysts working across Kent with a remit to help CMEs link to local teams, community wardens and other business support organisations and to support CMEs to set up, expand or diversify and meet direct links with operational teams. While it is still early days, there are already more than 30 CMEs operating within Kent. This has built additional capacity for 387 people to be supported with day activities and an additional 500 hours of care and support in the home which is available to self-funders and those who receive council funding via a direct payment.

Local (district level) councils and housing associations have utilised some of the enterprises to undertake ad hoc specialist work, including assisting with hoarding. The feedback from both the organisations and the people supported has been excellent.

The target is to have 350 CMEs set up supporting approximately 2,500 people within Kent. Seed Fund panels have been created to review applications for grant payments and, already, 16 Seed Fund grant payments have been made to allow CMEs to set up or diversify without incurring additional upfront costs.

Helen Gillian, Senior Responsible Officer for Making a difference every day at Kent County Council, said: “We are excited to be working with Community Catalysts and on our journey to developing the support available in our local communities. In Kent, we have been working hard to ensure people have choice and control over the support they receive to enable them to live a good life. We recognise that a ‘good life’ is different for everyone and therefore developing Community MicroEnterprises supports us to be able to offer a diverse range of support to people. To win a Bronze Award at the iESE Transformation Awards is fantastic and I am proud that Kent is recognised for their innovative approaches to achieve personcentred care and support.”

To find out more contact: rachael.bushnell@kent.gov.uk