Innovative Authorities With Exciting Plans Win Adult Care Government Support

Three of the local authority-based winners of additional financial government support – Hampshire and Lincolnshire County Councils and Westminster City Council – will be working in innovative partnerships with Northgate Public Services to ensure that citizens receive the best personal support and care through enhanced information sharing, it was revealed today.

It is expected that the authorities will receive significant funding from the £33 million of additional government funding under the government’s Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for Adults Demonstrator Site Programme (DSP). Working with their PCT partners, the authorities will test and develop information technology solutions that will enable health and social care professionals to share assessment and care and support planning information between social services, the NHS, the wider council and other local partner agencies including user-led organisations and citizens themselves.

Northgate has identified seven key areas where improvement will be made as a result of the programme. These include:

• Personalising budgets – achieving personal outcomes and ensuring transparent resource allocation according to personal needs and resources;

• Streamlining assessments – starting with self-assessments and building into professional multidisciplinary assessment only where necessary, ensuring early financial assessment and collection of contributions;

• Supporting citizen self service – enabling access to secure processes for Self-Directed Support including self-funders; enabling self assessment; modelling a support plan; commissioning services and equipment and providing consumer feedback .
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Russell Osborne, Managing Director of Citizen Solutions for Northgate Public Services, added: “There has never been a more important time for us to develop and deliver effective and efficient solutions which support the personalised services that citizens expect. The right information given at the right time in the right way can dramatically affect the quality of adult care. We are committed to using technology intelligently to developing solutions which place the needs of service users and their carers at the heart of an effective health and social care system. We are delighted that these bids have been successful. We look forward to sharing our solutions with the wider health and social care community including our clients as the projects roll out.”