Agenda item

Jo Hinchliffe, Adult Care and House, Liz Bent, Crossroads Care, and Jayne Price, Carers Forum, to present

Jo Hinchliffe, Adult Social Care, Liz Bent, Crossroads Care and Jayne Price, Carers Forum presented an update on the Carers’ Strategy – The Story So Far.  Sean Hill from Children’s Commissioning and Kevin Hynes, Barnardo’s provided additional information regarding work to support young carers.

 

Crossroads Care

We aim to:

·           Relieve stress in the family or for the Carer of the person with the disability

·           To prevent a breakdown in care or inappropriate admission into hospital or residential care

·           Supplement and complement existing statutory services and work closely with them

 

Philosophy of Care:

Crossroads Care Rotherham respects the individuality of Carers and people with care needs and seeks to promote their choice, independence, dignity and safety.

 

Originally respite care was provided but activities had expanded to include activity groups, therapies and a befriending service, increasingly working with volunteers to deliver services.  Traditional respite was still important but it was also about people coming together and enjoying a life outside caring.

 

Crossroads Care was regulated by the CQC and were proud to have been rated as outstanding, which they could not have achieved without the support of partners.

 

Carers Forum

Supporting & empowering Carers to be heard & achieve better outcomes

Rotherham Carers’ Forum is an independent group which enables informal and family carers (unpaid), to have voice in shaping services in Rotherham.

We aim to work together as a strategic partner with Local Authority, Health Service, Voluntary and Communities organisation, charities and groups as an equal partner, participating and influencing local decision making on services for carers and their families. 

Carers Forum meets on the 1st Wednesday of each month between 12 noon - 2.00 pm

 

The Forum, comprised of unpaid volunteers, had been relaunched to get into the 21^st century and had a website plus Facebook and Twitter accounts with this virtual presence helping carers who were unable to attend meetings.  The group was solvent after accessing external funding.  A key focus was promoting carers wellbeing such as encouraging people to have flu vaccinations and through sessions on destressing and mindfulness.  It also acted as a two-way conduit for information and a mechanism was in place for raising concerns through an issue log.

 

Caring Together Strategy

Our aims are:

·           That every carer in Rotherham is recognised and supported to maintain their health, wellbeing and personal outcomes.

·           To ensure carers are supported to maximise their financial resources.

·           That carers in Rotherham are recognised and respected as partners in care.

·           That carers can enjoy a life outside caring.

·           That young carers in Rotherham are identified, supported, and nurtured to forward plan for their own lives.

·           That every young carer in Rotherham is supported to have a positive childhood where they can enjoy life and achieve good outcomes.

 

Four key priorities for supporting carers (National Carers Strategy DoH 2014)

·           Identification and recognition

·           Realising and releasing potential

·           A life alongside caring

·           Supporting carers to stay healthy

 

Rotherham Context

Profile of carers based on 2011 census data

For 2016 Rotherham had increased by approximately 600 carers since then.  9000 people p.a. in Rotherham become first time carers, so there were many people with multiple roles and the picture fluctuated over time.

 

Strategy Outcomes

Our ambitions are:

To achieve our aims we need to build stronger collaboration between carers and other partners in Rotherham, and recognise the importance of whole family relationships.

 

We want to lay the foundations for achieving these partnerships and set the intention for future working arrangements.

 

We want to do something that makes a difference now … whilst working in partnership with formal services, working together with people who use services and carers.

 

·           Outcome One: Carers in Rotherham are more able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions and feel empowered.

·           Outcome Two: The caring role is manageable and sustainable.

·           Outcome Three:Carers in Rotherham have their needs understood and their well-being promoted.

 

·           Outcome Four:Families with young carers are consistently identified early in Rotherham to prevent problems from occurring and getting worse and that there is shared responsibility across partners for this early identification.

 

·           Outcome Five:Our children are recognised and safeguarded in their challenging role and receive appropriate intervention and support at the right time.

 

·           Outcome Six:Children and young people in Rotherham that have young carer roles have access to and experience the same outcomes as their peers.

 

 

Putting the strategy into action …..

Making it Happen – Caring Together Delivery Plan

Qualitative measures

Quantitative measures

 

Headline Statistics

·           Carers resilience are working with approximately 480 carers per year, prior to Carers Resilience Service these carers may have remained hidden

·           Carers Resilience Service hosts 23 carers clinics per month across different Rotherham surgeries, last year we met with 365 carers across all disabilities

·           Carers Resilience Service works with 37 surgeries across Rotherham promoting the needs of carers to surgery staff and GPs

·           From our work with the surgeries we know that all have a Carers Register but these are operational to different degrees of usefulness.

·           Number of customers and Number of customers with an open main carer

·           Number of customers by age column split by age of carer - In terms of the health and wellbeing of carers this showed cohorts of quite old people whose carer was quite old as well.

 

The Carers Resilience Service was led by Crossroads Care and had been in place for about two and a half years, making a terrific difference for carers in Rotherham.  It picked up carers at the beginning of their caring role, recognising their different needs over time.  Due to the funding it was limited to carers of people with dementia but a bid was being developed, working with the Local Authority, to the Social Investment Bond to try and roll out to older carers as well and ideally it should be for all. 

 

Funding bids needed supporting evidence to back them up, meaning there was a need for statistics and data.  The VCS would be working with the Single Point of Access to pick up data on carers to support bids.

 

Young Carers Service Delivery

·         55 young carers and their families supported this quarter

·         169 face to face contacts

·         13 Group sessions

·         14 cases brought to closure

·         Young people included 17 Male and 38 Female

·         9 young people came from BME communities, equating to 17% of young people supported

 

Members were informed that the Young Carers Service delivered by Barnardo’s had recently moved from Doncaster to the Rotherham branch.  It would become more of a partnership arrangement looking at all the current services delivered in Rotherham and whether they meet need, asking questions around what young carers required and how best to do it.  Young carers were all individuals, all with different issues in their lives so services were needed that could respond to individual needs and create independence not dependency on services.

 

Since September Barnardo’s had asked the national Barnardo’s audit team to look at how the service operated so that nothing was overlooked.  They had also had support for a Theory of Change workshop from the University of Bedfordshire.  It had been a good time to take stock of current services, especially improving links to other agencies as before Barnardo’s had operated more in a silo.  It had been a positive start but they were only eight weeks in.

 

Achievements so far ….

·           Carers Week 2017

·           Crossroads Care Garden Party

·           Grassroots Giving winner

·           Carers Rights Day 24 November 2017

·           The service continues to raise awareness of the Young Carers’ Card in schools.  At present this is mainly done through contact and visits with Head of Year contacts within schools.

·           Supported by the Voice & Influence Partnership to host an event at the Carlton Park in July 2017 which enables young people to voice their feelings and hopes for the children and young people in Rotherham.

·           Young Carers Council continues to be active members of the Different but Equal Board.

 

Next steps …

•        Carers Forum – Sustainability Plan

•        Events and Activity Plans

•        Consolidation of a carers offer – real and tangible

•        Strengthen the Caring Together Delivery Group to increase the distance of travel against the action plan

 

As the Carers Forum was comprised of people who were carers first and foremost there was a worry about whether it would continue if the present people were no longer involved and it was a struggle to get people involved and do things.  An aim would be for it to become self-sustaining and not dependent on a small number, but resourcing back office functions was difficult. 

 

One of the key aims of the strategy was reaching out to hidden carers and although the virtual side was good they would like to undertake more physical outreach going out to where carers are.  It would be good to free up some time for people to go out and do events or some outreach work, which helped to raise the profile of carers.  The Forum was also an umbrella organisation where other groups such as Headway, Carers for Carers and the Rotherham Parent Carers Forum could come together. 

 

The Strategy steering group was ready for a refresh against the Terms of reference as membership had changed over time with people joining and leaving.  Dialogue was taking place with Children and Young People’s Services and Barnardo’s in order to have the right mix of partners involved and be accountable.

 

A lot had been included in the delivery plan and it was a case of trying to group the 21 actions into key themes and drilling down what was needed in terms of actions.  Some actions would still be red or amber on RAG ratings and it was about converting more of these into green and looking at the reds and exploring reasons why.  It was a work in progress and needed a refresh.  Some elements had movement, especially qualitative ones like events, but the quantitative measures needed to be worked on and partners were realistic about the current position.

 

Questions ensued with the following issues raised by Members:-

 

How much information did you get back from GPs on carers as in my practice I have never been asked about being a carer, or seen any information?

-          All surgeries had a register of carers so it was interesting that you had not been asked.  The registers needed to be worked on and kept up to date and by having workers in there every week the message was going out.

 

Regarding outreach, Maltby Town Council held information days so there would be an opportunity there.

 

Would it be feasible to set up carers base groups in other areas of the borough for carers who could not travel into Rotherham i.e. locality based smaller groups?

-          This would be a good way forward and had been talked about but it came down to resources.  It would be great to encourage local satellite groups to collect, share and channel information and make more hidden carers come forward and feel they had a voice.  Back filling for carers would be key.

 

You mentioned supporting 55 young carers – how were young carers identified and what was the role of Early Help?

-          Conversations had taken place between the previous manager of the Barnardo’s service, children’s commissioning and heads of service in Early Years around the strategy and there had been input from the Early Help team.  Children’s commissioning had spoken with Early Help earlier that week about work taking place to increase the number of Early Help assessments and identification of young carers.  One of the main themes for the work that will come out of the review of the current Barnardo’s service is the importance of assessment and identifying the needs of young carers.  There was a clear plan with Barnardo’s going forward as part of a partnership arrangement and within that the voice of young people would be included, as the service was a key element of children’s services. 

-          The Young Carers Council (YCC) had been supported by Barnardo’s for many years.  Two representatives from Barnardo’s had attended the most recent Carers Forum meeting, including one longstanding practitioner, and had first-hand knowledge of representing those young people’s views.  Regarding detection or recognition of unknown young carers GPs surgeries would be a good place to bolster that to ask for those children to be actively searched for and also questions to schools asking them about identification.

 

Who represented young carers on the Carers’ Forum, did they not represent themselves?

-          Not at present as it met during school time, which was an issue and was why they wanted to make sure that in the first instance they had representation from someone who worked very closely with young carers.  The issue had been raised by Barnardo’s who were passionate about getting the real voice round the table and it was important to have a clear way in and to maximise the expertise of the YCC in the whole process.

 

The voice of the child was essential to every strategy in Rotherham and if the meetings were at a time when young people could not attend then perhaps the times of the meetings, or some of the meetings, should be changed. 

 

What input had young carers themselves had to this strategy?

-          The officers present had not been involved in the development phase of the strategy but were aware of conversations to ensure that their voice was captured.  Invites had gone out to Barnardo’s and children’s services but there had not been any children in attendance at strategy group meetings, which were all day time meetings.

 

You mentioned working with carers whose caring role is coming to an end, do you offer any support post-caring as there might be carers who might then need care themselves?

-          Two years ago lottery funding had been obtained for five years for building carer resilience but it needed to be sustainable.  Carers benefited from peer support in activity groups and when caring came to an end if they had not been involved in any activities they often became isolated.  Carers had a lot of experience and also often transferable skills and there were opportunities to volunteer to support other carers.  Carers also formed friendships and could form their own groups.

 

Did the work with GPs include ones whose practice was registered outside the borough but with patients who were Rotherham residents on their list?

-          The service was funded to work with every GP in Rotherham and if the carer was registered with a Rotherham GP but lived over the border they would still be supported.  Services were tied only to the practices in the borough.

-          Officers would follow up with Rotherham CCG for clarification on this issue.

 

The action plan mentioned reducing exclusions for the young carer cohort.  How big an issue was this?

-          If a student with a Young Carer’s Card was late for school due to their caring role this would be taken into consideration and it was recognised that some young carers had very complex lives.

-          There were no statistics to hand so this would be followed up with a response.

 

What is meant by cases coming to closure?

-          The number of cases that Barnardo’s had worked with where it had been agreed after a period of time with the young person, their family and the referring agency that all signposting and adjustments had been completed.  For example liaison with school to make relevant staff aware that the child may occasionally be late and could show their card rather than explaining everything from scratch again.

 

Regarding governance, what arrangements were there for oversight of the strategy and action plan?

-          Governance was key and as mentioned earlier the terms of reference needed to be revisited, including a review of where the strategy group were feeding into.  From an adult social care perspective there was the improvement group with a governance structure there to feed into but a clear steer was needed overall given the complexity with the various partners involved.  It was agreed that this was something that needed to be worked on.

 

Was Barnardo’s now part of the delivery group?

-          Yes they were again now.

 

Actions 15-21 had no timescales or performance measures, so would these be added otherwise how would it be evidenced what work was taking place?

-          This would be part of the refresh and it needed to be more of an accountable document.  Actions flagged as ongoing were also a concern as it was unclear if they were part of an action plan to deliver an agreed action plan to deliver a specific piece of work or routine activity.

 

Partners were thanked for their presentation and contributions.

 

 

 

Resolved:-

 

(1) That the action plan be updated to become SMART with clear lead officers, performance measures and timescales for all actions.

 

(2) That a clear focus be given to ensuring the voice of young carers is captured and informs implementation of the strategy, including by linking in with the Young Carers Council.

 

(3) That further work with GPs be undertaken to ensure they are identifying young carers and including them in their carers register.

 

(4) That work with schools continues to identify and support young carers.

 

(5) That a detailed progress report be presented to the HSC in March 2018 on implementation of the delivery plan.