Adult Social Care Strategy 2022-25
'The life you want to lead' - Adult Social Care Strategy 2022-25
In 2021 we co-designed our 3-year Adult Social Care Strategy with customers, family and friend carers, Council staff and partners including the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCSE). Through a series of focus groups, 1:1 interviews, workshops and a survey; plus, oversight from a ‘Sounding Board’ made up of local partners; over a thousand people were part of the process to build a strategy that reflects their voice and what they want adult social to look and feel like to them. The strategy sets out five priorities:
The priorities set out in the strategy drive the way we deliver support in West Sussex and are the guiding principles and areas for action behind our improvement journey.
Our ambition is to be a well performing council with adult social care services that are person-centred and meet the needs of our population. However, we recognise we are still on a journey of improvement and have been making strong progress over the past two years. In 2021/22, we put in place the foundation for a successful adult social care service:
- Adult Social Care Strategy 2022-25 – co-designed with local people and partners and focused on the priorities of adult social care customers and carers
- Programme Management Office (PMO) – new PMO established to design and deliver the improvement programme
- Governance – new governance established to shape and provide oversight of financial savings, performance and wider improvement work
- Partnerships - new VCSE Collaboration Board established to oversee the delivery of the new adult social care strategy in partnership with the VCSE. We continue to be a lead partner in developing our West Sussex place-based health and care partnership with the NHS, as part of Sussex Integrated Care System, as well as the continued development of district-based Local Community Networks. Our Director chairs the West Sussex Health and Care Place Partnership
- Our population – population needs analysis undertaken to better understand current and future demand for adult social care services
- Service-specific reviews – a review of the commissioning functions for all people services undertaken (adult social care, children’s social care, public health and communities) to shape the service required in the future.
In 2022/23, we built on these foundations to begin delivering changes to the way we structure and deliver our services, to reflect what people told us in our Adult Social Care Strategy:
- Adult social care market – developed a new Market Sustainability Plan for the older people care market
- Commissioning – following the review of commissioning we have:
- Structure - restructured the adult services commissioning team, including new Leadership and reprofiled roles for staff
- Joint commissioning - reviewed our Section 75 agreement and contracts with the NHS to identify where services could be delivered better; and reviewed current intermediate care pathways to support care in the community and out of hospital
- Collaboration – established a new commissioning forum across ‘people services’ to work together on commissioning projects and support business infrastructure. This includes a new workforce development programme for over 100 members of staff, launching in 2024
- Operational services – delivered a new protocol and pathway for young people to transition from children’s services to adult services.
- Business infrastructure – undertaken an extensive mapping exercise to look at ‘as-is’ pathways for customers on their journey through our services, to identify where further improvements need to be made.
We have chosen the areas we are most proud of across the themes below as a result of analysis of our Care Act 2014 compliance or those areas where we have made good progress over the past two years. Our areas of development have been chosen from a combination of analysis undertaken above, feedback from staff, feedback from complaints or because the work is key to delivering our Adult Social Care Strategy.