Social Care Programme

The social care programme draws together all the Personal Social Sservices funding activities from the Department of Health(DH), takes into account priorities from other LDC areas of work and sets out the links across to other major initiatives work streams and partners.  Examples of these are: Directors of adult social care (ADASS) the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and Primary Care Trusts (PCT).

The driving force for the priorities in LDC come primarily from DH National Policy and the outcomes that are required to achieve that policy set out by National Programme Leads.  These outcomes or initiatives are then developed into discrete programmes to support the development of Adult Social Care (in its widest context) across London.

The Priority Policy drivers fall into three main categories:

• The overarching aim set out in the Putting People First concordat  brings together the main activities of individual budgets, self directed support and transformation of services. 
• This transformation agenda sees its outworking through commissioning activity and personalisation and will ultimately ensure that individuals who use services have control over how those services are organised and delivered. 
• Underpinning this transformation is the drive to improve council’s performance and achieve the best use of resources by ensuring efficiency.

Part of this transformation approach is achieved by moving from the traditional descriptions of services into groups (e.g. older people) to be more focussed on issues or situations that cut a cross these  rather arbitrary boundaries.  This means that the priorities are set out under main issues including, dementia, dignity, long term conditions and early intervention.  This more accurately describes the outcomes that are needed to support people in both health and social care and links across to the wider health and wellbeing agenda.

Some of these programmes are then drawn together and developed using development vehicles such as, the Joint Improvement Partnership (JIP) (See Cross Cutting Issues), the Local Area Agreement (LAA).  This ensures partnership working and involvement and most importantly outcomes that are more locally driven and owned.

Other developments include those that will significantly improve the engagement of people in communities to be more effectively involved in the quality and appropriateness of services.  This will mainly be delivered through the LINks programme (See Cross Cutting Themes section).

Many of the priorities and the grouping of them has been the result of extensive stakeholder engagement and this will continue to be a feature of the role at LDC.

Some areas of activity are not discrete but rather underpinning elements of other activity.  This includes both Commissioning which underpins all of the service improvement and efficiency agenda and the transformation of services and the efficiency requirements to achieve national PSA targets and local requirements.

As a part of this plan we are seeking to achieve a coordinated approach to Commissioning closely linked to the national initiative set out in world class commissioning and recognising that areas of mental health also require commissioning initiatives.

Most importantly the locally determined HMP and Business Plan will continue to be developed bearing in mind the particular situations that London presents due to its size, complexity, range of partners and population demands.

The overall objective is to improve services and thus improve the experience of people that use those services.  Recognising that staff at all levels in those services should be given the development tools that they need and that those engaged in decision making about services and resources are supported and challenged by policy and best practice.