See how a 12 week home care discovery in North East Lincolnshire has helped staff and users reshape how this service could be delivered in future.
North East Lincolnshire is a small unitary authority with a population of approximately 159,804. Projections indicate a 2 per cent population increase between 2012 – 2037 with the number of people aged 85 + predicted to more than double.
The council has recently partnered with FutureGov and one of the projects they worked on together was to spend 12 weeks exploring provision of homecare and what might be done to reshape this service moving forward.
The challenge
North East Lincolnshire provides a range of care and support for adults in the borough. However, similar to other councils they were keen to do more to improve people’s experiences of receiving and/or delivering care and support, particularly at home. Known challenges in the provision of homecare in the borough included a reduction in face-to-face meeting time, carers not feeling valued and pressure on key relationships (such as between GPs, social workers and carers).
The solution
Working with FutureGov, North East Lincolnshire initiated a 12 week project using a multi-disciplinary team to discover the needs of stakeholders at all levels of the service (including frontline staff, service users, GPs, CCG representatives). This was to better understand who the users were and what their experiences were of interacting with the current service.
The team then analysed and synthesised the insights gained through this discovery in order to start prototyping solutions and testing these with stakeholders.
The project has prioritised understanding the needs of people interacting with the service (whether they be receiving or delivering care and support) whilst at the same time engaging with staff in re-imagining how the service could be delivered.
Although 12 weeks is a short timeframe for reshaping a whole service, it is enough time to learn from key stakeholders’ experiences and then prototype and test new ways of working that will help.
The impact (including cost savings / income generated if applicable)
In response to some of the challenges identified, North East Lincolnshire has been able to try and test a range of prototypes.
In order to improve communication and relationships with other health and social care professionals, the council will be working with a local care provider and one of their care teams to trial a healthcare specific communication app over a two week period. Once the two weeks is up, the success of the trial will be evaluated and either built on for the next iteration or another potential solution will be explored.
Other prototypes include an NHS badge being added to carer uniforms as a method of validating the role of carers and using a free platform that can be used for key documents to be shared and edited to ensure transparency and reduce duplication across key stakeholders.
How is the new approach being sustained?
The approach has prioritised engagement with users (with those responsible for delivering care and support being a key user group). The support of senior staff in the work has been critical but at the same time it has equally been engaging of front-line staff and users – recognising that services need to be designed with them rather than for them.