Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust is helping to lead the region in caring for older people.
Together with local authority and commissioner colleagues, we have been chosen to spearhead new ways of working that will spread across England.
Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland was one of seven areas chosen to be a regional accelerator site for the Ageing Well scheme.
It will ensure that older patients have a two hour response to a sudden deterioration in their health condition, allowing them to remain safely at home and avoiding a hospital admission. A reablement package will then be put in place within 48 hours to help them recover.
The seven areas will share £14m, although the allocation to each area has not been finalised. It will come on top of £2.5m the three LLR Clinical Commissioning Groups have already pledged to develop ‘Home First’ community services.
Dr Noel O’Kelly, associate medical director, at LPT, said: “This is fantastic news for patients. Speaking as a clinician, I am delighted that this announcement will improve our ability to work with primary care and social care to deliver proactive, co-ordinated care to our most vulnerable and high risk patients and support them to live healthier, more independent lives in their own homes and communities.”
Tamsin Hooton, LLR Director Lead for Community Services Redesign said “This is great news for our health system. The LLR site will cover a population of just over a million people. Community services have sometimes been neglected in the past, but locally we have been working as a system on a large-scale redesign of community health services over the last year, leading to the agreement of a new model that will integrate community health services with social care and primary care, ultimately to improve patient experience and outcomes.
“This announcement means that we now have the national support and pump-prime funding needed to continue the vital work we were already doing with local partners. This is a significant boost to our local plans and will enable us to increase the pace and scale of this work.”
NHS chief executive Simon Stevens said: “The NHS working hand in glove in the community with council-funded social care services can be the difference between an older person or someone with long-term health needs spending a week or a month on a ward – or getting the right help early so they don’t need to go to hospital in the first place.
“That’s why as part of our Long Term Plan for the NHS we are putting community services front and centre, and backing them with a growing share of the NHS budget – and putting in place these new standards will give people and their families peace of mind about what they can expect from their local services when they need help most.”
Shifting more care out of hospital and into the community is one of the key commitments in the LLR Better Care Together plan.
Jon Wilson, Director of Adult and Communities, Leicestershire County Council commented: “We are very excited locally about the opportunity that this investment gives us to bring together NHS and social care services to deliver integrated personalised care for people. Our partnership work aims to enable people to return home from hospital as soon as they can and to stay at home avoiding an admission to hospital, wherever possible. By providing a single point of access into health and care service for people who may be experiencing a crisis, or require additional care quickly, can vastly improve their outcomes and helps to support their families.”
LPT will be starting a significant recruitment programme to support the acceleration work. They will be looking for registered nurses, physiotherapists and healthcare assistants to join community teams working closely with social care and local GP practices.