Tailored Care Handling

Inverclyde Health and Social Care Partnership

As with areas across the UK, Inverclyde is experiencing issue recruiting care staff. Combined with an increasing demand on services there is a need to rethink how we maximise staff to deliver high quality social care.

Within increasing demand and decreasing resources, the nature of what is needed has change. The shift in balance of care has resulted in a higher proportion of complex care being provided at home. This means that there has been a significant increase in moving and handling equipment provision.

The practice of giving two to one support in cases of complex moving and handling has been criticised by the Inverclyde service user representation group as being too invasive, with lots of different carers entering people’s homes.

This project tested and made the case for supporting more personalised solutions for moving and handling and the provision of specialist equipment to allow support to be provided by just one person.

What was the approach?
The approach taken was driven by developing new moving and handling training and incorporating care equiptement and techniques that allow support to be deliverd by one person. This was an opportunty to individualise moving and handling solutions, work closer with the person to provide something that fits for them. The core approach was a ‘invest to save’ model whereby upfront investments in training, staff and personalised equiptment would reap long term financial benefits while maintaining a commitment to the National Outcomes.

Key activities:
- 8 staff trained as trainers
- 65 Reablement Home care trainers trained.
- Team meetings across HSCP attended, and
- IN reach OT session with acute AHP’s.
- Carried out 110 assessments
What was the impact?

There are currently 27 people on the project. There is a positive impact on quality of care/quality of life i.e. better service user outcomes having one carer or even better no carers.

There are good examples of how this project has helped people in different ways.

Quality of Care

The Reablement and Occupational Therapy staff have been up-skilled to support them to provide better quality moving and handling training staff.

Care at Home staff reported stronger therapeutic relationships with service users. One staff member commented that she felt she had a better relationship with the service user as she was more focused on communicating with her rather than a colleague.

Increased independence

In a number of cases family members were able to use the equipment with training which resulted in less reliance on care services and more choice and freedom for service users.

One of the service users and her husband noted that they felt they were able to lead as normal a life as possible because they were not restricted by the times they would have had carers visiting.

Finance

There were significant savings made through this approach.
What are the next steps?

The case is being made for a spend to save approach to sustain the project longevity. Without ihub funding there would not have been the resource to evidence the value in the change of practice to release the funding which will be transferred from Care at Home services budgets.

If ongoing funding is supported there are plans to make this the common approach to moving and handling where appropriate.

For further information on this project please contact: hcis.inquireseevit@nhs.scot

Evidence and Evaluation for Improvement