“We need each other now more than ever”

“We need each other now more than ever”

Closing the gaps between care providers is a daily role for social workers – you have to liaise with GPs, hospitals, housing teams and many others to support people in the best way; the same is true with private providers. We spoke to Paul Burley, founder of Burley’s Home Care, about his experiences of multidisciplinary care and how it works in practice for his clients.

There’s an African proverb that says ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and the same concept is true as we get older. Thanks to advances in modern medicine we can live longer with multiple healthcare or mobility challenges, but many of us need support from different sources to stay as well and independent as possible.

I started Burley’s Home Care in 2009 with my wife Carly. Between us, we had years of personal and professional experience of home care and had seen first-hand the real difference it can make having specialised care from experienced professionals. We wanted to be able to provide the care and support that we had seen people in need of, and I’m proud to say that ten years later we’re still doing that.

One thing I’ve known from the very start is that to truly support our clients we need to work with them, their carers, families and a range of other professionals such as social workers, community teams, mental health teams, and GPs. By working as a team, we can fully understand each person’s needs, and ensure we are providing the right care at the right time.

A partnership approach is important; often the way carers can have the greatest impact is not obvious from an initial assessment or single visit. However thorough we are with our own assessments, we won’t know exactly what a person needs until we’ve worked with them for a week or so.

We started supporting one of our clients after she had suffered multiple strokes, and although she was able to manage a lot of her own care at home, the effects of her condition meant she struggled to leave the house. The isolation and loneliness she felt led her to self-medicate with alcohol. Our carers had initially been making visits to support her in leaving the house, taking her shopping or to social groups, and had seen an improvement in her wellbeing. Because she was still reasonably capable at home, her social care assessment outcome was low and visits were reduced. Sadly, the loss of interaction meant her alcohol consumption quickly increased and she went back into hospital. In these cases, we see a person’s true needs over time, and this is where we need to work closely with our social care and nursing colleagues to develop and adapt a care package which supports people in staying well.

I like to think that the insight we have through daily visits and conversations can help social workers to build a full picture, which they can’t always do whilst managing caseloads and competing priorities.

There are daily headlines about health and social care in the UK, and even from my position outside of the system, I can feel the effects of many years of budget cuts. The pressure to make the books balance is extreme and if I’m honest I find the politics, finance discussions and red tape to be wearing at times. In a real situation, when there’s a person sat at home or in a hospital bed in need of care, time can be lost worrying over a few pounds difference in the cost of care, or waiting on forms, however I do understand the reasons for these challenges and the need to use the right processes.

I spend much of my time at work speaking to care professionals from different backgrounds and organisations and there is one thing that tends to unite us all; our purpose. We are true carers and just want to be able to help people with the work we do. For all the tough days and stress, it’s the human interaction and cases where we can really make a difference that keep us going. The NHS Long Term Plan sets out how the healthcare system needs to change in order to meet the needs of a growing and ageing population, and social care is no different. For many years we’ve been closing the gaps between organisations and it’s vital for this work to continue so we can play a role in supporting people with care that’s individual to them. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach and although in today’s overstretched and under-funded system it can be incredibly difficult to meet people’s expectations, finding individual solutions that deliver the best outcomes for each person should always be our shared priority.

These challenges are much easier to overcome when we have good working relationships with our social work colleagues. Being able to pick up the phone when we need to and be confident in an agreed care plan for our clients makes such a difference.

We were making daily visits to one client for 30 minutes at a time following his social care assessment. He needed support with personal care and was very overweight, with a regular need for cleaning and dressing developing pressure sores and sweat rashes. The local authority had installed a wet room for him but he was unable to use it alone. We were able to discuss his needs with social care colleagues and increase his visits to 45 minutes, allowing our teams to help him shower and get dressed every day. We immediately saw a huge difference in his wellbeing and quality of life.

It’s clear that the future of care delivery is a partnership; for the people in need of care and the organisations working to provide it. We need each other now more than ever.