Our successes

This provides a brief summary of our key successes. You can read more detail in the sections as indicated below in italics.

Introduction

• Reflections from the Adults’ Services Customer and Carer Group

• New technology, an Owl microphone, has ensured that members of the group can easily participate in meetings whether they attend online or in person.
• Members of the group attended and took part in the planning and running of the staff conference held in April 2023.
  
  

• Reflections from the chair of the Minorities Health and Social Care Group -The group worked with County Council staff to co-design guidance to support them to work respectfully with people from different communities.

Working Together – equality and diversity

• Our working together groups

• Established a Voluntary and Community Sector Collaborative Board to support the delivery of key priorities of our Adults social care strategy 2022-25.
• Established a Co-production Practitioners Group.
• Design principles developed with people who use services, family and friend carers, staff and other stakeholders to underpin decision   
• Created a design panel to consider new projects and service developments to measure their alignment to the principles.
• Established a senior leader customer and carer engagement forum.

How we’ve performed

• Adults and Health business planning

• The publication of a Market Sustainability Plan.
• Commenced a two-year programme of improvement in April 2023 – supported by political and executive leaders.
• Published our Care Quality Commission (CQC) self-assessment for the Assurance process. This is subject to regular review ready for submission.

• Health and social care integration - Contributed to the development of the Sussex Integrated Care Strategy, Improving Lives Together and the subsequent five-year Shared Delivery Plan.

Wellbeing, prevention and independence

• West Sussex Connect to Support health and wellbeing website - 116,463 visitors and 791,645 web pages viewed.
• Carewise care funding scheme

• 325 people referred for specialist financial advice on paying for long-term care.
• Age UK West Sussex Brighton and Hove held 5662 individual free money advice sessions and accessed additional benefits for people totalling £3,452,312 million.

• Occupational therapy

• Staff worked with 10,168 adults and children and 62,440 deliveries were made to people’s homes providing 260,904 pieces of equipment.
• 1,766 people were provided with reablement at home. Of these, 1,200 were able to care from themselves. Of the remaining 566, 82% were able to reduce their care and support at home by at least 10%.

• Discharge to assess reablement service - 205 people were discharged from hospital to the service and 61% returned home following their stay.
• Home First service - 150 people supported to be discharged from hospital to their home.
• Technology-enabled care - 1,892 new installations.
• Prevention Assessment Team - 1,636 referrals to the team supporting people who may not receive services from specialist health care teams or social care services. NHS nurse advisers completed 489 health checks.
• The wellbeing programme - 8,040 people supported.
• The Community Hub - Since its launch in March 2020 support has been provided to over 55,000 households under the Household Support Fund and over 20,000 residents provided with direct food support.
• Extra Care - Working with district and borough councils, housing providers and care companies to provide an alternative to residential care and to secure further developments. Extra care is now expanding to include all adults with care needs regardless of age. We have invested in a dedicated Extra Care lead and a team of operational staff who lead on assessing, reviewing and supporting people living in Extra Care.

Supporting people when they need it in a way that works for them

• Family and friend carers

• Over 28,000 registered with Carers Support West Sussex.
• 471 supported via the Support at Home after Hospital service.
• Over 2,000 assessments completed.
• A new Carer Welfare Benefits Service advised on £3 million in additional annual income for carers.
• 1,400 allocated equipment to support their caring role.

• Carers Health Team -1,577 carers benefitted from the work of the team.
• Specialist support for young carers and their families - Over 700 requests for the service.
• Working with Young Carers and their Families - e-learning course now available to all professionals and volunteers.
• People with lifelong disabilities

• 4,907 people aged 14 years and over registered with a GP (2% increase from previous year) and 76.4% of these benefitted from an annual health check (68.5% in the previous year). We exceeded our target of 75%.
• Development of a local peer support model.

• Directly-provided services

• Supports around 600 people a week.
• Our Shared Lives scheme has an overall CQC rating of 'Good' and an 'outstanding' rating for 'caring'.
• Shared Lives Plus Awards 2022 - Two people supported by the scheme received the human rights award for free expression.

• Supporting people with mental health needs – The creation of new mental health service model.
• Dementia-friendly communities – 10 in West Sussex with a membership of over 300 businesses.
• Keeping people safe from neglect and abuse – The multi-agency Safeguarding Adults Board, our Safeguarding Adults Hub, the pan-Sussex Safeguarding Adults Threshold Guidance .

The workforce - our staff and providers

• The Regaining Independence Service – Awarded the Brighton University School of Sport and Health Science Practice Educator Award in July 2023.
• International recruitment – Our approach shared with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) and we worked with Oxfordshire County Council to develop a toolkit for others across the south east region.
  
  
• Supporting providers and the care market

• The development of the Great Care Employer scheme to support the provider workforce. The scheme has been recognised as good    practice by both Skills for Care and NHS England.
• The Proud to Care initiative supporting the market with recruitment     and retention
• Publication of the Market Sustainability Plan
• The development of our Quality Assurance and Market Support team

Quality Assurance

• Quality assurance processes

• Robust quality framework in place to monitor compliance with policies and procedures, evidence good practice, identify areas for improvement and to drive learning.
• Audits conducted collaboratively with practitioners.
• Regular staff learning bulletins to share lessons from incident reviews and audits.