Care Act special edition

Devon County Council sent this bulletin at 01-04-2015 06:00 PM BST
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1 April 2015

Ppat

Please would managers ensure that their teams read and understand the staff guidance.

Key Messages

A reminder from Sally Slade – Head of Adult Social Care

I wanted to let you all know that Devon will be compliant for our new 1st April Care Act duties. The majority of you will have been on Care Act training recently and I hope that this has been valuable to you. All of the new and updated policies, processes and staff guidance are listed below.

There will be further implementation requirements and milestones after April and we are also getting prepared for those – with further guidance to follow.

Thank you all for your continued engagement with these important changes, building on our current working practices wherever possible to do so.

Please talk to your line manager if you require any further information about these changes or need additional advice or support relating to these changes. If you have a specific query about the care act reforms please email careact@devon.gov.uk

Devon County Council implements the Care Act today (1 April 2015)

New policies, processes and practice guidance has been added to the staff pages on the source, and to the public facing website.

The new staff guidance will include PDF versions of the process maps. The main process maps will be updated in April.

  • Eligibility
  • Prisons
  • Carers 
  • Advocacy Process Map
  • Supported Self-assessment Process for Care Direct

Please carry on as normal until new staff guidance and process maps become available.

To follow in April

  • Direct Payments

NB: The personal budget support page on The Source has been renamed to staff guidance – including Care Act requirements and Personal Budgets.

The new policies are listed below:

    • Eligibility
    • Advocacy Statement
    • Protection of Property
    • Carers
    • Transport

    Please carry on as normal until new policies become available.

    Policies to follow shortly:

    • Ordinary Residence
    • Deferred Payments
    • Charging for Community Based Care Services
    • Charging for Residential and Nursing Care Services
    • Financial Top-ups

    Other plans and strategies

    to follow in April/May

    • Market Sufficiency Plan
    • Community and Care Home Provider Closure Framework and Checklist

    to follow in June

    • Prevention Strategy

    CareFirst update for staff

    MyAssessment, MyPlan, Carers Assessment, Carers Support Plan

    The Care Act 2014 which came into force today 1st April 2015 requires a number of changes to CareFirst.

    Changes to CareFirst will go live on 7th April this will include the new My Assessment form, My plan. The new carers assessment and support plan will go live from this date as well

    What does this mean for assessments that I am working on?

    • If you started an assessment prior to the 1st April 2015 you can continue with this.
    • Any assessments started from Friday 3rd April 2015 will appear in the ‘new’ style.

    • The old style Carers Assessment will be deleted from CareFirst and replaced with the new Carers Assessment. A Carers Support Plan will also be made available. Staff will be able to use these themselves, or begin and reassign to Devon Carers who now have CareFirst access. Guidance on this is detailed in the Process Maps on The Source.

    Further information

    You may find it helpful to read public facing website pages in order to understand the information that people will come with, or may need to understand, when we begin an assessment

    Please email careact@devon.gov.uk with feedback, suggestions or requests for support on these changes.

    For Occupational Therapists

    The occupational therapy process is not fundamentally altered by the Care Act. DFG and Housing legislation is not affected. The main themes of previous legislation eg: Chronically Sick and Disabled Person Act 1970 are all contained within the Care Act 2014, but with updated languages. More detailed information will follow shortly.

    How are we doing? Tell us what you think of our Adult Social Care Newsletter by 17 April...

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