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Background

Find out how Torbay’s mission statement for adult social care underpins everything we plan to deliver.

Torbay’s mission statement for adult social care underpins everything we plan to deliver through the transformation of care services. It states that:

We will work with our local community to support residents in Torbay to maximise their own wellbeing and independence, advising and guiding them around the best health and social care systems for them.

Those who offer and provide support services will feel empowered to enable people to engage fully in their own decision-making on choices of care.

By working with our community this way, we will create a new way of supporting each other to achieve wellbeing for everyone; those receiving support and personal assistance and those giving it.

In Torbay we have a long legacy of striving for and delivering integrated care through the bringing together of local authority social care services with local NHS services, both in the community and in acute hospital provision. We believe that by doing so we can offer better care that is person-centred, responding to the things that matter most to people and helping people to live well for as long as possible. Our shared vision is one of:

Thriving communities where people can prosper. We want our residents to have a place to call home, in a community they can be part of while being empowered to achieve what matters most to them through the best care and support available.

For many people, receiving help to stay at home and to maintain their independence for as long as possible is what matters to them and this is one of the key intended outcomes of our integrated care model. Because many health and care services are provided by partners across the independent sector, only by working together to help achieve this outcome will we achieve the best we can for people in Torbay. 

The way in which we deliver care and support is also changing and our partnerships with care providers need to change too. We need to work together at different times in a person’s care and support journey, recognising that people’s needs change and that they need a responsive and agile network of support combining their own resources with NHS, social care, local communities and the independent sector. At the same time we need to ensure this care and support is timely, sustainable and does not weaken natural support by promoting dependence on state-funded care until it’s really needed.

Working through the timeline of the Adult Social Care Improvement Plan and beyond, the adult social care market transformation project will deliver changes to the shape and scope of commissioned and contracted care and support within Torbay. The Care Act 2014 places a duty on the Council to:

Facilitate a diverse, sustainable high quality market for their whole local population and to promote efficient and effective operation of the adult care and support market as a whole. They must also ensure continuity of care in the event of provider failure.

This duty will be met within the context of four overarching strategic priorities:

  • Enabling more people to be healthy and stay healthy;
  • Enhancing self-care and community resilience;
  • Integrate and improve community services and care in people’s homes;
  • Deliver modern, safe and sustainable services.

This overarching blueprint document sets out an overview of the needs and social policy driving adult services in Torbay, alongside the required changes needed to meet that demand successfully at the right time, quality and cost. It will form the basis of ongoing engagement with customers, providers and partner organisations to shape the future market for integrated social care and support.

In line with the strength-based approach underpinning the Care Act 2014 and the social policy changes that lead to that legislation, Torbay’s commissioning approach seeks to:

  • Reduce the systemic use of residential care to meet social care needs. This means not placing working-age adults into care homes wherever possible and pushing back the threshold at which older people may need to enter a care home. Across the Council and our NHS partners, we will only commission and place in homes capable of meeting very complex and nursing needs, working with our care home sector to constantly improve quality and capability within Torbay.
  • Increase the use of enabling housing-based models of care and support so that people have a greater choice and control over how, where and with whom they live, as well as who and how their care is provided. This means continuing to create effective supported living options for all age groups that enable people to live well at home for longer. These options include ambitious capital projects such as large multigenerational extra care housing schemes and smaller specialist schemes for groups with specific needs, as well as new models of home care to support people to remain living with family carers in the family home.
  • Increase the number of people able to maintain their own independence through their own strengths and those in the community around them. This means offering better information at an early stage to enable people to recognise their own strengths and assets, combining them with voluntary or community support and access to equipment & technology to meet their needs in the first instance.

The following sections set out the demographic drivers and commissioning responses for the key areas of work, i.e. people over 65 with complex needs & dementia; people of working age with enduring mental illness and people with learning disabilities & autism. The proposed commissioning plan is based on national and local evidence of need and will form the basis of a detailed project plan to be delivered over the next three years. This in turn will develop a solid process for strategic commissioning decisions beyond that point.