Our Adult Social Care Annual Local Account gives us the opportunity to reflect on the successes and challenges of the past year care while recognising the progress we have made and identifying areas for further development. It is now more than eight years since we became an integrated care organisation which enabled us to join up adult social care in Torbay with hospital and community care, delivering integrated health and social care.
Three years of the pandemic has only increased the pressure across all aspects of health and social care and those who live in our most deprived coastal communities have seen an increasing gap in health inequalities. The health and care challenges communities like ours face in terms of both physical and mental health was the focus of Professor Chris Whitty’s (England’s Chief Medical Officer) 2021 annual report.
Our established partnership between health and social care services has provided a solid and enduring foundation on which to build and develop further as we strive for better health and care for all. While the attention (and media) often focuses on blue light and hospital services, the work our teams do together is central to our belief that care as close to home as possible benefits everyone.
We passionately believe that the best way to care for people is by focusing on what matters to them, putting them at the centre of everything we do and integrating services around them. The stories shared in this document reinforce the importance of home and community and of listening to what matters to the people we support. We all need somewhere where we can feel safe, where we feel connected to others and where we feel valued. Helping people find a home or assisting them to stay in their home, supporting people with their choices about how they live, empowering people to achieve what matters most to them – this what our adult social care teams are doing each and every day and it is changing people’s lives for the better.
But our adult social care teams don’t work alone. They not only work with each other and in partnership with our hospital and community services but, importantly, with people who use their services, their carers and loved ones and our fantastic local voluntary and community partners such as Torbay Community Development Trust, Healthwatch and many others too numerous to mention (but each uniquely valued). Together they are creating sustainable networks of care and support for people.
During the past year, we have further strengthened our local relationships. The launch of the Devon Integrated Care System and the development of the South Local Care Partnership has offered and will continue to offer new opportunities to work closer together on the wider complex web of issues which affect people’s health and wellbeing – housing, education, environment and employment. Together through the South LCP we are putting an increased focus on suicide prevention, self-harm and the experience of children in care. We are working together with statutory bodies, the voluntary sector, communities and local people on a plan to address each priority.
As we look to the future, we plan to continue the positive progress made this year across many of our services. For example, teams working on discharge to assess are delivering better outcomes for people living in the community who need support or care, including reducing the risk of people being permanently admitted to residential care and supporting people to get home from hospital quickly as soon as they are well enough to leave. We know the care home market and domiciliary care markets are fragile, we know attracting and retaining the right people to join us is difficult and we know that the cost of living crisis is affecting everyone – not only individuals but organisations (both statutory and in the voluntary sector).
Despite the challenges we all face, we have confidence that by working together through our established partnerships and by focusing on the work we are doing together to reduce the health inequalities experienced by local people, we can continue to improve health and wellbeing while also supporting the regeneration of the bay area.
Together we will build on the strengths we have so that we can co-create a brighter future for everyone in Torbay.
Sir Richard Ibbotson
Chair of Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust
Liz Davenport
Chief Executive of Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust