Adult social care

Adults’ Services are reconnecting with the guiding principle that the primary use of information should be to provide high quality care to the individual. They are also experiencing a funding squeeze and under pressure to deliver more care for less money.

Personal budgets are already becoming a reality for more service users and this is likely to lead to changes in practice such as:
 

• Encouraging providers to work through electronic market places
• Enabling and encouraging patients and service users to hold and control their own record
• Enabling professionals to see the service user’s record as the central record, and configuring their own work around this
• Introducing formal feedback mechanisms, including review and linking results back into service planning

These in turn create challenges for management and information systems:

• The need to develop an informed and secure market place for social care services and subsequent contracts
• The key links required for paying for services
• Greater focus on secure communications between patients and service users, service providers and local authorities

The current information environment in health and social care is dominated by large-scale information systems, containing a huge amount of information, but mostly unable to talk to each other and with no agreed approach to interoperability.

Socitm Consulting can help your department overcome these challenges. Our services include:

• Independent and objective reviews of your current processes and information flows, in the light of Putting People First and your local circumstances
• Assessment of how fit for purpose your ICT systems are, both for existing and upcoming initiatives. We can advise on whether your systems fit, or could be made to fit, and can support you in contract renegotiation or procurement processes where they don’t
• Workforce remodelling - including home, mobile and flexible working and the fundamental – but often neglected - issue of how to get your people to use systems better
• Clarification of connectivity issues around GCSX and N3 networks for inter-agency working with the NHS and other local service providers, and advice on wider communication with citizens across a range of channels

Our clients in adults and children's services include:

ADSS IMG
BECTA
Bolton MBC
Bury MBC
Calderdale MBC
Camden LB
Darlington BC
Department for Education and Skills
FAME project
Greater Manchester e-Government Partnership
Greenwich LB
Home Office
Inverclyde Council
Leicester City Council
Lancashire County Council
Lincolnshire County Council
London Connects
Manchester City Council
Merton LB
North West e-Government Group
Northamptonshire County Council
Portsmouth City Council
Royal Borough of Kingston
Sefton MBC
Solihull MBC
South Gloucestershire Council
Southwark LB
South West Grid for Learning
South Tyneside and Gateshead
Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Teacher Training Agency
Telford & Wrekin DC
Tower Hamlets LB
Wakefield MBC
Walsall MBC
Waltham Forest LB
West of England Learning and Skills Council
West Berkshire Council
West Sussex County Council

If you would like to discuss how we can help you in this area, please call us on 0845 450 0904 or email info@socitmconsulting.co.uk.