Welcome to the Adult Social Care Newsletter providing staff
with one source of information relating to adult care management, social care
provision and commissioning.
If you are a manager please ensure these details are read
and understood by your team members.
If you know of any staff who are not receiving the
newsletter, please let us know
Can’t find the Adult Social Care Process maps on the
Source? Click here
for a direct link to the maps and supporting guidance.
Care Act Update
An update on recent Care Act activity.
If you would like to ask any questions or make any
suggestions as to how Devon should approach and implement the Care Act then
please email the Care
Act mailbox
Adult Social Care
Operational Remodelling (ASCOR)
The Adult Social Care Operational Remodelling (ASCOR)
project was launched with your managers on 13th November and will
affect the way we organise and deliver our operational services, building on
our strengths and addressing areas for further development.
The Adult Social Care Leadership team will oversee the
project which will develop and support the implementation of change in
operational services, including the following areas:
-
Integration of learning disability, physical and
sensory and older peoples care management models (i.e. affecting CDP/CCTs/LD
teams)
-
The transition of safeguarding staff to
operational teams and streamlining of processes
-
Implementation of principal Operations OT and SW
roles
-
Revised arrangements for the management of
the retained in-house services
-
Consideration of 7 day working to support
hospital discharge
For further information click here
A fair and affordable
RAS
The new RAS
approach and associated changes to My Assessment are still scheduled to come
into effect on Monday 9th
February 2015.
Many Thanks to
everyone who has attended the training so far. We have received much feedback which has been
useful both in terms of refining training content and to inform future changes.
If you assess
adults and produce personal budgets via the RAS please ensure you attend a
training session before Christmas. You
can book onto a course here.
For more
information about the forthcoming changes refer to the project web page. On
this page you can now see:
-
The new
My Assessment
-
Prototypes
of the new RAS screens
-
Changeover
detail – what you will need to know about the changeover
Carers Consultation –
Staff Briefing
At the end of November a
consultation, ‘Carers and the Care Act in Devon’, went live and is available to
the public.
This will support work that is currently in progress to
develop an offer for carers that will fulfil the requirements of the Care Act
2014. For further details click here
Quality threshold for
residential and nursing care placements
As of October 2014, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has
introduced a new rating framework. Devon
County Council has revised the threshold for commissioning new residential and
nursing care placements in line with the new CQC ratings.
Where a residential or nursing care home has been rated by
CQC as Inadequate, DCC will only
commission placements once it is clear that required improvements have been
made.
Information added to the homes
vacancy database will indicate where homes do not meet the threshold for
new placement to be commissioned. For
placements out of county, care managers should check the CQC rating for any
home before discussing the options which may be available.
The Quality Improvement Team (qualityimprovement-mailbox@devon.gov.uk)
will continue to offer support to providers and advice to operational managers.
Process maps explaining the role of the Quality Improvement
Team, in relation to quality thresholds for commissioning residential and
nursing placements, are now available. These will shortly be added as a Viewpoint to
the main Adult Social
Care Practice maps for future reference.
The related policy “Quality
and Safety of Commissioned Services” has been updated on the public
website.
Day Care
Specification – Recently launched
We have recently
invited buildings based day services for adults to apply for membership of a
Preferred Supplier List (PSL).
Providers can choose
to join the list at any time, but we are encouraging early application to
support the transition teams arranging alternative day service provision for
people affected by the closure of DCC day centres. It is encouraging that a number of new
providers are emerging and that existing providers are modernising their offer
to deliver a more personalised approach to these services.
Applications will be
reviewed by a team including operational staff, commissioners and
representatives of user and carer groups prior to accepting the provider onto
the PSL. If you would like to be
involved in this process please contact sam.alford@devon.gov.uk.
The PSL will be
available for care managers and CDP teams to view and will detail the services
provided and the costs to assist you in your conversations with service users
about how best to meet their needs and choices. The list will also be useful for people
considering how to use their direct payment. This list will be updated on a regular basis
(fortnightly initially, then monthly). Performance and quality will be
reviewed on a yearly basis at least; again involving representatives of service
user and carer groups.
Members of the
strategic commissioning team have started to work with a number of community
and voluntary sector groups, and micro enterprises of various types, to develop
the range of non-building based day services that will eventually complement
the above PSL. Again if you would like
further information or are interested in getting involved in this work please
contact paul.collinge@devon.gov.uk or sam.alford@devon.gov.uk. Your
interest and involvement will be most welcome.
Better Care Fund
Information
For the latest information on the Devon Better Care Fund,
please visit the Health and Well Being Board website.
Workforce Development
Update
-
Web Pages
- The new Workforce
Development Social Care web pages are now live! They contain a range of information and useful
links. We are always looking for feedback so if there is something that
you would like to see on these pages please contact emma.pateman@devon.gov.uk
-
PPaC 2/4 Training – Click
here to book onto PPAC 2/4 training which will be
focussed on the Care Act. Practice
Managers, Team Leaders and LD Deputy Managers will need to attend these main
dates. We will soon be publishing dates
for Cluster Managers and LD Team Managers to attend additional training prior
to the main dates. In January we will publish some outline
information provided prior to the training.
-
Calling all OT’s – Please
remember that you need to do your ERA update and hoist competency update once
every financial year. If you have not
done this since April 2014 you will
need to book on again prior to the end of March
2015. There have been enough dates
advertised and many courses have been undersubscribed so please book on ASAP.
Resources and Publications:
-
There is a new website out called ‘The Social
Care Elf’ (http://www.thesocialcareelf.net).
The Social Care Elf features
expert blogs that summarise reliable research, policy and guidance. New posts appear every Tuesday and Thursday,
and you can follow the Elf via email or social media.
-
Mental Capacity Law Newsletter – December Edition
Care First Update
-
Changes
to CareFirst passwords – Following testing we will not be able to implement
the password changes expected in December, as the settings we have anticipated
using don’t work. We are awaiting advice from OLM, and are now
expecting to implement mid-January. Further
information will be made available in the next Adult Social Care Newsletter.
-
System
changes – For details of the system changes that are going to be affecting
Adult services in December click here
-
CareFirst
Training – *Reminder to Managers* - CareFirst
training courses are scheduled on demand. To avoid delay in training for
new staff it is important for managers, (as soon as they know when a new member
of staff is starting), to ensure staff are added to the corporate on-line
booking system waiting list, so that a course can be scheduled prior to them
starting, or link in directly with the Business Systems Training Manager. If a course is available then
the manager should book their place direct.
Instructions are now available on ‘How to create an account and book a
place on CareFirst training’. Please note for many courses
there is a pre-requisite to have attended the ‘Generic Foundation Input’ course
prior to attending another course.For more details about the
courses on offer, see the CareFirst
Training Catalogue.
Information
Governance Update – Knowing when to share
The information governance team receive many enquiries about
when it is appropriate to share information and when it might not be.
Data Protection is not a barrier to effective sharing but
asks that sharing be done professionally, legally and securely.
The team have published an extensive range of information
and guides on sharing – on subjects such as consent, privacy and rights, and
also some golden rules. This information
is available on the Knowing
when to share pages on the Source.
If in doubt, please contact the Information Governance Team (accesstoinformation-mailbox@devon.gov.uk)
Out of Office – What information to record
Due to the nature of how we communicate nowadays, those who
work within front line social care teams need to update a range of
communication tools when they are going to be out of the office for a period of
time e.g. the telephony voicemail, outlook email, CareFirst messaging.
Enabling colleagues and clients to know you are out of the
office and unable to respond to queries/questions is imperative, not only to
maintain good customer care, but to ensure any safeguarding concerns are
managed in a timely way.
How do you enable people to know you are out of the office? Instructions on how to set ‘out of office’
messages are now available
Staff Directory
It remains important that you keep your entry in the Staff Directory up to
date. It is easy to do and only takes a
few minutes. In addition you are reminded
that the mobile phone policy states that you should include your work mobile phone or blackberry number as
standard so you can be contacted when necessary. The people that administer our fleet of
devices have asked that you do this to help them as well.
Bright future emerges out of uncertainty - Introducing
the Rowell Centre
After announcing that The Chambers in
Crediton which provided day care for adults with learning disabilities was
proposed to close, both staff and service users faced an uncertain future.
Because of this staff decided to take matters into their own
hands, and with inspiring results! (PDF version)
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