PRESS RELEASE : Leading the country’s way forward with Adult Social Care in Dorset [October 2022]

The press release issued by Dorset Council on 21 October 2022.

Examining how Dorset Council residents access adult social care could inform national changes to how care is provided, due to a unique partnership with the government.

The council was selected out of 15 local authorities which bid to work with the Department of Health and Social Care. The partnership with look at how residents currently get referred into the adult social care and how their experience could be improved.

What is discovered could be used to change the way people access social care in the future and create new ways of working for older people, people with a learning disability or mental health needs, across the country’s 151 local authorities. This could be in the form of better access via the internet to tweaking how assessments and reviews happen.

A team from the government department’s Digital Policy Unit will be working with the adult social care and digital teams until the New Year. The team will make recommendations at the end of the 12-week partnership.

As part of the fact-finding partnership, which includes asking questions of those who use the service, new models will be suggested and tested in a bid to find a solution for residents and the council.

The work is part of government charging reforms programme revealed in the People at the Heart of Care which, from October 2023, changes how much residents will pay towards their care and will introduce a cap on care charges.

As a result, how residents interact with local authorities will fundamentally change. All solutions are being considered which will allow each resident to track qualifying spend on care provision for adults aged over 18 years and hold this information in an individual care account.

Councillor Peter Wharf, cabinet member for Adult Social Care and Health, said innovative solutions were needed for residents now and in the future.

He said: “Dorset Council is leading the country’s response to the very difficult issue of adult social care.

“We are at the forefront of this early work around what, and how, changes can be made to the way people interact with council to get the best option for adult social care, for them.

“More solutions to adult social care are being found online independently by residents and families, and this could mean the resources at the council can be directed to residents who need it the most.

“This partnership is great for an ambitious council committed to embracing technology and smart ways of working which meet the aspirations for residents to be at the heart of their own care provision. We should be proud to be making this contribution for the benefit of residents and all local authorities.”

A Department of Health and Social Care team member, said: “After weeks of planning, we have launched our informal DHSC and Dorset Council adult social care partnership.

“Our aspiration is to go a bit beyond the limits of the traditional discovery. We would like to co-design a model that could be re-used across multiple local authorities. Perhaps, even applied to solve an important business problem.”

Dorset Council’s population has the highest percentage of over 65s and over 85s in the country, which creates huge challenges and pressure on resources. More than 40 per cent of the council’s total budget was spent on Adults Social Care in the 2022/23 financial year and is estimated to increase seven per cent each year.