Find out more about how adult social care works in Torbay as part of the Local Account Summary.
We want people in Torbay to live happy, healthy, independent lives, with care provided closer to their home. We want to support people to manage any health conditions they may have, wrapping health and care services around them to help them stay in their homes, surrounded by their family, friends and loved ones.
Our ambitious adult social care strategy will be delivered through a number of plans, including the adult social care sustainability and transformation plan and transformation plan, Safeguarding Adult strategic business plan our joint carers strategy.
We will achieve our goals by working together with our partners, including people who use our services and their carers, Healthwatch Torbay, partnership forums, care and support providers, the voluntary sector network, and Devon Partnership NHS Trust. Partners routinely measure the impact of their work to tackle risk and drive improvements in adult social care.
We can only deliver our vision by working with people with experiences of our services, and the public. They are equal partners both in the planning and delivery of services and we will learn from them to build a more accessible, responsive, resilient and personalised system.
Torbay has a long and strong history of integrating health and care services within the Bay and has delegated much of the responsibility for delivery of adult social care to Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust. Torbay Council remains accountable for adult social care, retaining the lead for strategic commissioning and employing the director of adult social services.
Our council leads the delivery and oversight of our adult social care strategy but in close collaboration with our NHS trust. Both organisations retain leadership and oversight of the implementation and delivery. The council’s Cabinet and overview and scrutiny committee, and the trust’s board are supported by the Adult Social Care Continuous Improvement Board (ASCCIB), which provides an independently-chaired forum for partners to oversee their joint work on adult social care, providing support and challenge and escalating any risks and concerns through each organisation’s governance arrangements, and will provide key oversight of the strategy going forward.
Most providers are on the Torbay supported living framework, which facilitates referrals from practitioners through a vacancy register, and provides a focus on promoting people’s independence, quality of life, health, and wellbeing. Only one provider is not on our framework but working towards the same quality measures.
During 2022/23 the partnership work between the statutory sector and voluntary and community organisations in Torbay matured further. Together we have built upon close working and trust that accelerated in response to the pandemic with the creation in 2020 of our community helpline.
The council has promoted a community-led approach in Torbay to promote people’s opportunity to build local contacts and improve their access to community assets, through investment in the voluntary sector. It is in everyone’s best interests to provide community-based support to address loneliness and isolation leading to better outcomes for people. We work in partnership with the Community Development Trust and the voluntary sector to help people to get home from hospital when they no longer need clinical care and wrap services and support around them to help combat loneliness and isolation and avoid being readmitted to hospital unnecessarily. We are committed to continuing to support this type of help and will commission a longer-term contract for this type of care and support.
The cost of living crisis has created distress for people, with the rising costs of food, gas and electricity adding strain to household budgets.
We have worked with the voluntary sector to create a voluntary sector procurement alliance to agree how we can use allocated money including the adult social care precept to help it reach the people who need it the most.
The alliance completed a procurement process to address the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis and awarded £500,000 across eight local voluntary sector organisations.
This money has been used to:
These schemes will run from 2023 to 2025 and will enhance the voluntary sector offer.
Community centres in Torbay have been repaired and improved thanks to extra investment and we’re talking to people who live and work in Torbay to co-design a more impactful use of these valuable resources at the heart of the community.