The full document takes you through the context we work in, the evidence we considered against these 4 themes (working with people, providing support, ensuring safety, leadership) and our conclusions.
We have a clear vision, strategy and improvement plan. Our work will never be done because we must be set up to continuously improve - whether that’s adapting to evolving professional standards or changes in demand or expectations. You will see this reflected within our strengths and improvements because we are placing a great deal of effort into having the right structures and relationships so we can effectively monitor, respond and adapt on an ongoing basis.
Our vision
The core ambition of the Adult Social Care and Health department is to support adults, young people and children to live their best lives.
We are committed to working in partnership with local people and all stakeholders across our system. This is so that we can collectively continue to refine and deliver on our shared vision to support an environment where the people of Derbyshire and their loved ones enjoy good health and wellbeing, are active, independent and can take personal responsibility for reaching out to quality, integrated support if, and when, they need help.
Our strengths
We have a well-established improvement programme with clear priorities. We're focused on enabling people to achieve better outcomes through greater choice, outcome focused planning and delivery, and improved quality of services while also delivering substantial cost-pressure reductions and savings for the council.
Quality monitoring is becoming a key strength both within our local market and our own directly delivered care services. Our approach to early intervention and effective partnership working supports quality improvement and the journey towards high standards of care.
Our learning and development offer for all colleagues enables them to perform well in their roles and to develop throughout their careers. We provide opportunities for professional qualification and academic study and are committed to supporting colleagues’ continuous professional development.
We are embedding a performance focussed culture. We have a practice Quality Assurance Framework which is overseen by our Principal Social Worker and our Practice Standards and Quality team. A performance report incorporating qualitative measures linked to our strategy is reviewed in monthly extended senior leadership team performance meetings.
Our challenges
We cannot ignore the budget challenges Derbyshire County Council faces. As an Adult Social Care and Health department we recognise that we are an outlier in terms of our spend per head of the population. We took the difficult decision to publicly consult on and revise our Community Charging Policy. This was to support the ongoing sustainability of the department and protect Adult Social Care provision for the people who most need support from the council.
Although we have a workforce plan and are working across our partnerships through our “Joined Up Careers” Derbyshire activities, we do have difficulty with recruitment and retention. Our frontline practitioners have a strong commitment to the people of Derbyshire, the Adult Social Care department, and the council but due to our current pay arrangements across the council, we are unable to offer them a level of remuneration which reflects that of our closest neighbours.
We are continuing to face increased demand and we must strengthen our system partnership approach to create sufficiency and sustainability for local people.
Our Senior Leadership Team has experienced change over the past 12 months; however, the current leadership programme and our strong leadership culture has and will continue to mitigate this.
We need to strengthen our approach to co-production and participation. We need to establish more formal feedback cycles to ensure “local voice” is embedded within our strategic and local planning.
Ongoing improvement
We've been working to transform the delivery of Adult Social Care via the “Best Life Derbyshire” improvement programme. We're redesigning our own in-house provision recognising our responsibilities towards the wider market and the importance of the promotion of direct payments. We've had considerable success in improving outcomes for people with a learning disability or who are autistic and have strong performance with high numbers of people living within their local communities.
We need to expand our reablement offer for older people to meet demand. We have redesigned our model, developing multi-disciplinary Short-Term Assessment and Reablement Teams within each locality. This was implemented on the 15 January 2024 and will align with our local Derbyshire Community Health Service reablement offer so we can continue to work across the system to improve the community offer for local people.
Across system partners we are developing an ambitious programme to build on the success of Team Up and Living Well. We continue to work in partnership develop our Place Alliances recognising the difference and diversity across Derbyshire and the need for local development, alongside the strategic vision, of support and services.
The Derbyshire Health and Wellbeing Board sets and oversees the strategy developed to improve the health and wellbeing of the people of Derbyshire and leads a whole system partnership approach to delivering against a series of priorities that aim to increase healthy life expectancy and reduce differences in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy across differing communities.
The strategy is developed using data within the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment which informs future planning and commissioning of health and wellbeing services across the Derbyshire.
Accessibility
The documents attached to this page may not meet accessibility standards. If you require any in alternative formats please email asch.adultcare.policy@derbyshire.gov.uk.