Team Up Derbyshire is currently changing the way we care for all the people in a neighbourhood who are unable to leave home without support. The programme is seeing the creation of one team across health and social care in Derby and Derbyshire – a teaming up of existing services and the creation of additional capacity – with general practice, community care, mental health care, adult social care and the voluntary and community sector all working together and with their local communities.
It is now an opportune time to review progress to date and work out the next steps on this transformation journey. As such, Team Up has brought in Newton Europe, specialists in operational improvement, to help diagnose issues and pinpoint the areas where there is the biggest potential to make a difference to services, the provision of care and the health and wellbeing of our population group. The company has previously worked with 40 local authorities including Derbyshire’s children’s services and adult social care services.
The reason for this work is that we want to help those people facing progressively rising needs to remain independent. We want to support more people to return to their best life after a crisis or escalation in needs, with increased access to reablement services. We know there are opportunities to make a big difference – it is a case of capturing the big ideas and putting them into action.
A core offer of Team Up is the urgent community response (UCR) service. This provides crisis response care within two hours of referral and reablement care (support to help people live at home) within two days of referral. UCR brings together home visiting services, rapid response nursing and therapy services, adult social care rapid response services, and falls prevention and falls recovery services. Improved care and support for individuals through this programme will likely see a reduction in ambulance call-outs, emergency hospital admissions and the need for long-term residential care.
We need to ensure that our approach is both transformational and sustainable. This means we must consider the health and care system as a whole, how the various parts of the system interact and influence each other, and how the decision-making of thousands of individuals who make up our system contributes to the service and people’s outcomes.
Newton Europe is helping us by carrying out research into the way the system currently works and holding workshops to investigate issues and future opportunities. This will lead to a realistic, practical transformation plan that is owned and supported by frontline staff and management. The key focus will be on what new or different ways of integrated working will result in the most benefit for local people across Derby and Derbyshire. It is expected the initial phase of research and engagement will last for about eight weeks from this Spring, with implementation set to last for up to 18 months.
Image used with this article by Alexander Grey from Pixabay