Friday, 6 November 2009

Round the clock care gives good results

Evaluation of care services for older people with mental health problems in Herefordshire show positive results.

Herefordshire Council and NHS Herefordshire joined forces over a year ago to provide 24 hour domiciliary care services for older people with mental health problems.

The aim was to give individuals the choice of living at home, prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, reduce long-term residential or nursing care admissions, and improve support for family carers.

Services include:

· Homecare in partnership with Sure Care Services
· Roving night service coordinated by the council’s Intermediate Care Service
· Assistive technology such as activity monitoring, Smart phones and fall sensors.

The scheme started as a pilot in south Herefordshire and has now been rolled out across the borough.

The evaluation of 37 service users shows:
· 78 per cent who were at risk of long term residential or nursing care still lived at home after six months and 57 per cent after a year
· 37 per cent improved and 59 per cent of individuals maintained their level of functioning and dependency
· a reduction of 43 per cent in residential and nursing home admissions in the pilot area
· potential savings of over £100k in first year of operation for the 37 identified service users.

Herefordshire is a finalist at the regional Health and Social Care Awards 2009 under the Innovative Health and Social Care Technology category.

Contact Herefordshire Council Health and Social Care; telephone: 01432 361600.

Falls technology put to the test

A bid for funding to carry out a review of technology used to detect falls among older people has been submitted to NHS West Midlands.

Falls are a major cause of death and injury in people aged over 65 and roughly 800 people fall every day in the region.

Previous studies show automatic fall detectors can reduce falls and the fear of falling. But the take up of this technology is low in the West Midlands.

The review will assess current falls detection technology, identify reasons for poor take up, help develop better products, and recommend improvements to assessment and referral processes.

The bid has been put together by representatives from the West Midlands Regional Telehealthcare Network, the JIP, West Midlands ADASS, Coventry University, and MidTech. If the bid is successful the review will start at the end of November 2009.

For further information contact Sue Williams, JIP Project Development Manager; telephone: 01905 796799, email: swilliams@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk

Recording and reporting telecare – how do you do it?

The Joint Improvement Partnership (JIP) wants to know how local councils are recording and reporting on the use of telecare.

By gathering this information the JIP aims to develop a more systematic and regional approach to recording and reporting, and show how telecare impacts on personalisation.

Information can be sent to Sue Williams, JIP Project Development Manager; telephone: 01905 796799, email: swilliams@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk

Assistive technology - Staffordshire Council round up

Examples of current work within districts and use of assistive technology:


Automatic Pills Dispenser
The project continues to gather momentum. Working closely with the PCTs and local pharmacy committees, briefings have taken place and because of the tremendous support from community pharmacies a number of training sessions are being run across the County in November. Staffordshire County Equipment Centre will distribute the dispensers to local teams, maintain them and offer on-site technical support to pharmacists as they become familiar with the installation and set up.



Building on this work each district has now identified a link worker to work with local pharmacists to develop joint working, information exchange and new ways to improve support to local communities.



Staffordshire’s initial learning from this project will be shared at the regional LTC Telehealthcare conference on 24/11/09

Tamworth
Staffordshire Fire Service risk reduction technicians are installing telecare technology in partnership with County and District Councils, offering an integrated, comprehensive and timely risk reduction assessment.



The assistive technology (AT) demonstration facilities based with District Council Offices continues attract visitors and build understanding of AT as a preventative and assessment tool



BUDDI GPS technology is being used within the Community to offer support and monitoring

Newcastle
BUDDI GPS technology is being used as part of the assessment process and in one case has been given to a former postman in the early stages of dementia allowing him to still go out for walks. The unit will remain with the man as part of his maintenance package.



Are also developing an Enablement facility for adults with a Disability. This will be based on proactively planning with people of all ages who may wish to receive support to develop independency, inclusive of Assistive Technology. This project will also utilise the IQ system from Halliday James who have recently awarded the Newcastle Wellbeing team £10,000 worth of Technology which is specifically suited to adults with a Disability as it focuses on the Whole person and assessing that person and develops bespoke packages of support not reliant on physical support on every occasion.



The I-health flat in Chesterton continues to attract visitors and actively promotes the latest technology




Stafford



Assistive Technology was promoted at the recent Care2Share event held for careers and has already led to requests for automatic pill dispensers, memo minders and volunteers to trial a new Portable pendant alarm system being tested in the County.



Promotion of AT to partners continues. Awareness raising of AT as an assessment and preventative tool with housing colleagues has started.

Cannock Chase
The County’s first Telehealth pilot will commence in January 2010 jointly funded by the district and South Staffordshire PCT. A multiagency project board is coordinating the implementation and evaluation.



Planning is underway for an assessment and demonstration suite to be located within Cannock Hospital to promote understanding and use of the whole range of assistive technologies.



A property housing threee adults with learning disabilities is being developed into a SMART house to support assessment of needs, promote independence and offer the most appropriate support without compromising privacy and personal space for the tenants.



The 2008 DH evaluation of Just Checking continues to stimulate interest and recently support has been given to Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Dudley Councils in their implementation of the scheme.

Moorlands
Regular multiagency meetings are held to promote and explore the use of AT across a very rural district. This approach is helping to develop an integrated approach to assessment and problem solving.



Close working with Leek Moorlands Hospital and the Staying at home Scheme has led to the use of Just Checking in helping to assess and manage risks in the community. It has challenged assumptions about the ability of someone with dementia to live in their own home where they are familiar with surroundings and are able to follow their longstanding daily routines. The integrated approach of the current support plan which includes five days day care, family support and the just checking system has supported the individual and their family to achieve their goal of remaining at home and not enter a residential care home.

East Staffordshire



Working closely with Trent and Dove Housing the District has developed a joint initiative of providing Assistive Technology devices for both new and existing customers of First Call, with Trent and Dove being able to direct order these ‘preventative’ devices from our County Equipment Centre, therefore alleviating any delay in the provision of these vital pieces of equipment. From evaluations there is proof that this is really promoting the health and wellbeing of customers, preventing hospital admissions and maintaining the safety of our most vulnerable citizens. Examples include:



1 Male aged 90 years; a medication dispenser was provided which ensured that F took vital medication.
2 Female having frequent falls resulting in medical support being recruited far earlier
3 Female received assistance re both falls and from flooding in her bathroom
4 87 year old lady prone to wandering late at night, son alerted who returned mum home



Plans are being prepared to develop an AT Property to showcase AT and aid assessments.



South Staffordshire



Joint working with District Council and South Staffordshire PCT is leading to the opening Lichfield



Close working with housing providers has led to improved understanding of assessment for and delivery of assistive technology across the district. Regular local meetings have led to reduced paperwork and a more flexible, innovative and personalised response to needs.



The District has a link worker who will work with the monthly Burntwood Alzheimer’s CafĂ© and will help promote AT along with other social care and health services for people with dementia and their carers.



The use of the LOC8TOR technology is successfully helping maintain a woman who is always misplacing her purse and accusing family, friends and care workers of taking it. The LOC8TOR is used to find the missing purse, helping to reassure the woman who otherwise would ban support from her home and quickly deteriorate without her support plan.


Contact:
Jim Ellam, Assistive Technology Project Lead, Joint Commissioning Unit, Staffordshire County Council, Walton Building, PO Box 11, Martin Street, Stafford ST16 2LHTel: 01785 278554 / Mobile: 07966 857526, E-mail: jim.ellam@staffordshire.gov.ukwww.staffordshire.gov.uk

My Care, My Way DVD

Sandwell MBC has made a DVD to promote three of its social care services to local people.

Funded from the PCT’s Choosing Health budget, the brief was to produce a film for older people, by them, focusing on services that were not well known.

The services are:
Extra care – offering self contained accommodation with 24 hour on site professional staff, to older people with care and support needs who want to keep their independence
Telecare – providing equipment and monitoring to help individuals live independently and safely in their own homes
Individual budgets – whereby individuals may receive cash, services or a mix of both based on a care plan in which they have direct input.

For copies of My Care, My Way, contact the communications team; telephone: 0121 569 3031

NHS offers free intelligence

The NHS Information Centre is providing free information about adult social care services and performance across the country that can be used for monitoring and benchmarking.

Launched in July this year, the National Adult Social Care Intelligence Service (NASCIS) is being developed as the single authoritative source of social care data for practitioners and commissioners.

Set up in partnership with the Department of Health, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and other national bodies, it is designed to improve service delivery.

NASCIS provides up to date consistent data and indicators, to allow benchmarking, monitoring and comparisons between services, for example scrutinising the take up of direct payments and personal budgets, or finding out how much is spent on particular services in specific areas.

Click here for details

Online market for personal assistants

Plans are in place to develop new computer software that will allow service users to book personal assistants and other services online.

Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands (IEWM), has joined with information technology firm Opportunity Links, and online booking service Booking Bug, to develop the software for free as part of the social care transformation agenda.

It is estimated by April 2011, 30 per cent of people eligible for social care will receive individual budgets. Many will want to directly recruit personal assistants to provide domiciliary care and can do so through the online booking service. .

Click here for details

Rebranding care and safety in Sandwell

STAY (Sandwell Telecare Assisting You) is the new name for an innovative service to help vulnerable people live at home as safely and independently as possible.

Formerly known as Telecare, STAY provides and installs a variety of equipment to monitor and maintain a safe home.

The new name more accurately reflects the aims of the service which is jointly funded by Sandwell Council and Sandwell Primary Care Trust.

Previously, the telecare team found that residents did not know what telecare was or how it could help them. The name STAY comes from the five main principles of the service:
· stay independent
· stay assured
· stay healthy
· stay safe
· stay in your home

STAY equipment ranges from fall and movement sensors to smoke detectors, alarms buttons, pendants and remote control switches; and is free of charge.

Click here for details

Innovation award for Dudley

NHS Dudley has received an award for its innovative approach to managing long-term conditions such as heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the home.

The PCT, council, community services and the Dudley Group of Hospitals Foundation Trust, won an award for partnership working and the launch of their telehealth monitoring service in the regional Celebrating Success Awards.

The new service is currently offered to patients with two long-term conditions, and allows them to have their health managed remotely by nursing staff. Telehealth systems are set up in patients’ homes to measure individual’s health and well-being in the home environment.

Patients are trained to use the monitor by nursing staff and take their own blood pressure, oxygen levels, weight and temperature on a daily basis. This information is automatically transferred using a telehealth monitor to Dudley Community Alarm’s monitoring centre, where the information is checked and any problems raised with PCT nursing staff.

Pictured: Janet Howard of Dudley Community Alarms with Maggie Williams of Dudley PCT. (may use picture – see attachment)

For more information contact Melanie Godley; telephone: 01977 660313, email: melanie.godley@tunstall.co.uk

Assistive technology helps Staffordshire care

Staffordshire County Council has launched Staffordshire Cares, its new vision for adult social care.

Staffordshire Cares will provide easier access to information, advice and support and help people to navigate their way around the complicated world of adult care.

Emphasis is on developing a more holistic approach to delivering social care.

Building on the use of telecare in each of the 8 districts in the county, local teams are exploring new and innovative ways of supporting their communities. Knowledge and learning is shared between districts allowing a range of solutions to be tested and promoted in urban and rural areas. across the County.


Contact Jim Ellam, Assistive Technology Project Lead; telephone: 01785 278554, email jim.ellam@staffordshire.gov.uk

Coventry extends client base for telecare

Coventry City Council and its Orbit Care and Repair team are piloting a scheme to provide telecare services to people with moderate needs.

The service tends to be given to people needing high levels of support. The council wants to offer telecare to a wider range of people by October 2010.

The council already uses telecare in a variety of ways to give individuals more control and live independent lives. This includes:

· installation of 375 monitoring units and 1,500 pendant alarms across the city – most of them for older people in their own homes
· extending telecare to people from 18 years of age
· personalised nurse call pager systems for people in housing with care flats
· monitors in the homes of people with learning disabilities to detect changed in behaviour.

Telehealth expansion in Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton City Council has expanded its provision of telehealth following a trial run in partnership with Wolverhampton PCT.

The pilot, funded by central government’s Preventative Technology Grant, tested the feasibility of introducing telehealth across the city by setting up 40 health monitors and providing training.

The PCT has since paid for a technician’s post which is managed by the council as part of the Telecare team, and employed a project lead to make telehealth an integral part of health and social care.

Future plans include:

· the Royal Wolverhampton Hospital Trust respiratory team running a telehealth trial with the council and PCT
· the Strategic Health Authority employing eight project managers on 12 month contracts to support the PCTs telehealth leads
· participation in the automatic pill dispenser pilot project (see pill dispenser pilot launch story)
· exploring the possibility of a 24 hour response service and creating a joint health and social care city wide telehealth service.

The council is currently piloting with the Night Visiting Service, a telecare response service from 10pm to 7.30am.

For more information contact Helen Rowney, Telecare Co ordinator; telephone: 01902 553666, email: Helen.Rowney@wolverhampton.gov.uk

Signed, sealed and ready for delivery

Mobius UK has been contracted to bring service commissioners and providers together to work out how to meet the growing needs and demands of delivering personalised services.

They will help service providers and local authorities:

· Improve their understanding of each others needs
· understand the implications for commissioning
· identify potential opportunities for providers
· influence and shape the emerging personalisation markets

The work will be jointly funded by Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands (IEWM) and Department of Health West Midlands. Progress will be reported through the JIP.

Nine local authorities have already agreed to take part. They are:
Dudley MBC
Coventry CC
Walsall MBC
Sandwell MBC
Warwickshire CC
Worcestershire CC
Staffordshire CC
Birmingham CC
Wolverhampton CC

Other authorities wanting to be involved can contact Rob Williams on
mobile: 07740 704490 or email: rob@mobiusuk.org

Pill Dispenser trial goes live

Over 400 vulnerable adults in the West Midlands, who risk deteriorating ill health by forgetting to take their medication, are taking part in a major trial of an automatic pill dispenser organised by the JIP.

The pilot is the first and largest regional study involving health and social care specialists, with six local authorities and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) taking part.

The aim is to show how safe and appropriate technology can help vulnerable
people stay well and live independently in their own home.

Research by Birmingham University has shown the pill dispenser is beneficial for older people and those with early dementia or Parkinson’s disease, and could be useful for adults with learning difficulties or mental health problems.

The battery operated device has a built-in alarm which is programmed to sound or flash, reminding patients when and which pills to take. It can prevent those who have difficulty remembering, from overdosing or not taking enough, and, as a result, being re-admitted to hospital or placed in residential care for their own safety.

The dispenser will be trialled for six months in various situations. Data will be collected on:
· Users compliance with taking medication
· Users and carers satisfaction and feedback
· Savings to the NHS and social services
· Impact on reduction of wasted medication
A report on the findings will be published.

The pilot is a joint project involving the Joint Improvement Partnership (JIP), Boots UK and independent pharmacies and PivoTell the distributors of the dispenser, and supported with funding from the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) and the NHS West Midlands.
The following PCTs and local authorities have will be taking part:

· Worcestershire County Council
· Dudley MBC
· Staffordshire County Council
· North Staffordshire PCT
· Wolverhampton City Council
· Telford & Wrekin Council
Contact project manager, Andy Jackson; mobile: 07815 073611, email: andy.jackson28@ntlworld.com

Telecare research on track

Government backed research into telehealth and telecare technologies is in its second and final year.

Funded by the Department of Health, the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) programme aims to clarify how telehealth and telecare technologies can:

· promote long term health and independence
· improve quality of life for people and their carers
· improve the working lives of health and social care professionals
· provide an evidence for more cost and clinically effective ways of managing long term conditions.

The WSD programme, launched in May 2008, is one of the largest research programmes of its type.

Results will be published in 2010, and will provide the basis for future care and technology models that may influence DH policies and lead to wide scale investment in telecare and telehealth.

Click here for details

Making telecare work

Building Telecare in England sets out the government’s vision for the development of telecare services.

The document gives advice to councils and their health, housing and social care partners, on how to develop local telecare strategies.

The government sees telecare – the provision of equipment to help individuals live independently at home - as:

• reducing the need for residential/nursing care
• unlocking resources that can be redirected elsewhere in the system
• increasing choice and independence for services users
• reducing the burden placed on carers and providing them with more personal
freedom
• contributing to care and support for people with long term health conditions
• reducing acute hospital admissions
• reducing accidents and falls in the home
• supporting hospital discharge and intermediate care

• contributing to the development of a range of preventative services

• helping those who wish to die at home to do so with dignity.

Over the next 50 years the number of people aged 65 and over will rise from 9.3 million to 16.8 million.

Effective use of telecare and telehealth – using technology to monitor health conditions remotely - will make it possible for thousands of older people to remain independent and maintain control over their lives in their own homes for longer.


Click here for details