What Does a Good Provider of Care Look Like? – working with Adult Social Care
14/10/2020
PACC has recently been involved in a workshop with Adult Social Care teams from both Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin, looking at the process of purchasing care packages for supported living.
The new process will enable care packages for individuals with a disability (mainly Learning Disabilities and / or Autism) and Mental Health to be purchased and will provide a consistent approach across Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin.
The current Shropshire framework is focused on commissioning for learning disability support and does not really consider the need for purchasing care packages where an individual has support needs due to an Autism only diagnosis, or a mental health condition.
This new process will apply to those individuals who will need a supported living care package, which is defined as at least 50 hrs per week support, including at least one sleep in
It will not include those who need supported housing arrangements i.e. where there are no sleep ins needed.
It is also proposed that the new process will also be used to provide support packages to young people in transition, so that the same provider can deliver support pre and post 18.
The current Shropshire framework is not very flexible and only includes 7 accredited providers, the intention is to increase flexibility and to increase the range of providers that support can be purchased from.
It has also become clear that new skills are needed from providers, for example supporting those individuals with Autism only who may have a lesser need for support with daily living tasks but have significant needs around social communication and relationships. There is also a group of individuals who have specific needs around forensic support or supervision due to their contact with the justice system. Being able to choose from a wider range of providers, with a range of skills, should reduce changes of providers for those with complex needs, enabling the right provider, with the right skills to be identified right from the start.
Alongside this work consideration is also being given to how to improve housing provision, increasing the number of potential housing providers, developing standards so that their can be a similar accreditation process for housing providers. This will enable housing and care packages to be sourced at the same time
Currently the suggestion is that the care framework will include two levels of support, standard and specialist support covering:
- Living Well Skills – support to build independent living skills
- Care and Support – personal care and medical needs
- Positive Behavioural Support (PBS) – support to manage behaviour that challenges through the understanding of individual need
- Forensic support and supervision – support where there is a risk of involvement in the judiciary system
Standard provision will include support for daily living including PBS where appropriate and support for complex medical needs and personal care.
Enhanced provision will include forensic support and supervision including specific skill set around security, de-escalation and relationship security
The Accreditation Process
Providers from the open market will have to apply to be part of the Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin framework, via an accreditation process. This will involve answering several pass/fail questions. Some questions will be fixed and will remain the same regardless of which provision type providers are applying to be accredited for such as questions about convictions, status of organisation, inspection outcomes etc. There will also be a range of flexible questions that may change dependant on which type of provision a provider is applying to be accredited for.
These ‘flexible’ questions will be more concerned with the skills and experience of the provider in relations to different provision types. These questions will be co-produced with families and individuals with direct experience of support.
The timeline is for the accreditation process to open in the new year and then reopen every 3 months for new applications.
Securing Individual Support Packages;
When there is a need to commission support for an individual or a group of individuals who will be sharing living accommodation, there will be a further process that enables accredited providers to bid for the work. This process will include responding to individualised quality questions, developed by the individual requiring support, family members and known practitioners, that reflect individual support needs.
The diagram below shows how the full system will be structure.
A Chance to Get Involved
Adult Social Care want to co-produce the flexible questions to be used in the accreditation process and want to hear from parent carers about what they should be asking potential providers about. What are the key things that you want to know about how a care provider work? In initial discussions PACC has suggested some possible questions, such as;
- How does a provider work in partnership with parent carers and family members?
- How does a provider support transition into their service?
- How does a provider support the person being supported to express their wishes?
We are sure that there will be other questions that you would want to ask, it might be about a providers approach to finances, keeping healthy or accessing activities What ever would be important for you to know we want to hear about it. You can tell us what makes a good care provider by emailing enquiries@paccshropshire.org.uk
PACC will continuing discussion with the Adult Social Care during the next few months. Once the questions have been identified we will also be looking at what good looks like and discussing what elements an answer would need to contain to be identified as a ‘pass’ in the accreditation process. You input to this work will really help with this process.
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