Torbay Council’s Adult Social Care Commissioning Team, led by John Bryant, have been awarded the LaingBuisson award for Best Commissioner.

The awards ceremony, which was held in central London last week, hosted by presenter and politician Michael Portillo, recognised the Living Well@Home project as a new and innovative approach to supporting and caring for people at home.

Living Well@Home, which is a partnership between the Joint Commissioning Team at Torbay Council, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust and Mears Care Limited, provides care for people at home and helps to develop a more competent, confident and multi-skilled workforce. This leads to carers being able to undertake a series of tasks that will reduce the number of visits and callers people need to receive while being cared for at home, whilst increasing the quality of those interactions and the time together. This way of working focuses on their wellbeing and helps to develop circles of support around them, which leads to them having fulfilling lives.

Councillor Julien Parrott, Executive Lead for Adults and Children, said: “This is great news and I would like to say congratulations to our Joint Commissioning Team, and our partners, for being recognised for their innovative way of working and providing this much need project to our community. By being able to do more, carers can spend extra time with their clients instead of lots of people spending small amounts of time and rushing off. The council, with our partners, are committed to continually working together to develop this capacity within the community. By focusing on providing more care at home, existing community resources are built upon and new ones created. This improves care within our local neighbourhoods, reduces social isolation as well as offering even better work and career opportunities for staff working in this vital sector.”

Dr Sonja Manton, Associate Director for Community Health and Social Care for Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said: “Living Well@Home is a significant change in the way domiciliary care is provided for local people. By working this way the potential benefits are important not just for the people receiving the care but for the staff providing more meaningful care as well. The staff will also be able to benefit from on-going training and career development making it increasingly attractive and rewarding work.”

Executive Director for Mears Care Limited, Alan Long, said: "The challenges for Health and Social care are immense. The evidence everywhere is that the three main drivers for meeting these challenges are strong local leadership, the desire to drive real innovation and a recognition that this is best done through close working with partner bodies. John Bryant and the Commissioning team in Torbay have demonstrated all of these drivers in abundance and I congratulate them for this"

LaingBuisson is the UK’s foremost and most highly regarded provider of information and market intelligence on the independent health, community care and childcare sectors.

Left to Right: Tim Nand-lal, David Harborne, Wendy Price, John Bryant, Michael Portillo