Adult Care Reviews and ensuring good quality care
In Adult Social Care, we ensure that people receive good quality care by providing a person-centred approach. This approach means we listen to the person’s views about what is important to them and put their voice at the centre of care that they receive. We use this approach to agree your Support Plan and your Care Reviews.
Find out more about how Adult Social Care ensures people receive good quality care:
- Ongoing support
- Support Plans
- Care Reviews
- What to expect in a care review and who is involved
- How to get a direct payment changed so that your care needs are better met
- How to make a complaint
In Adult Social Care, there are systems in place to ensure concerns about quality are addressed. Anyone that has a concern about a person’s quality of care can contact Adult Social Care’s Access and Response Team on 020 7974 4444 and when prompted, say 'adult social care'.
As part of Camden Council’s Direct Payment service, independent specialist support is available to help you manage your direct payment. The service is for anyone who receives a direct payment, including their carers and families.
The specialist support is provided by People Plus. They can help you to set up a direct payment and provide ongoing support the whole time you receive direct payments. If there are any changes to a Support or Care Plan, or you have any queries about the direct payment, People Plus can advise you.
People Plus's contact details are:
Email - [email protected]
Phone – 0330 123 2815
Approximately 6 weeks after you have received your first direct payment, People Plus and/or the Social Care Practitioner or Healthcare Professional will aim to get in contact with you to find out how the direct payment is going and whether you have any questions about the care you are buying as agreed in your Support Plan.
If you have any questions, don't wait for People Plus or the Social Worker to contact you. You can get in touch with them any time that you require further information.
Employing Personal (Care) Assistants
If you are using direct payments to employ a Personal (Care) Assistant there is help available to guide you through the employment process and ensure the quality of care provided by your employee is to a standard you expect.
People Plus can provide information and advice on managing your staff and ensuring the quality of care is maintained.
People Plus can support you to:
- communicate with your staff from the outset reasonable expectations for the role, such as time keeping and boundary setting
- provide a code of conduct for your staff
- consider risks and how they can be mitigated
- explore training that your staff could attend such as lifting and handling; health and safety; epilepsy awareness; how staff can support you to make day to day priorities about your care and make good choices (eg. Talk for Health training https://talkforhealth.co.uk/training)
- provide written guidelines for supporting you to meet your care needs.
Should there be an emergency outside of working hours in relation to providing care and support, please contact the Emergency Duty Team on 020 7974 4444.
When your Social Care Practitioner or Healthcare Professional is assessing your care needs, they will work with you and your family or support network to produce an agreed Support Plan.
A Support Plan is unique to each person. It sets out:
- what your needs are
- how your needs will be met
- how Adult Social Care will ensure the care is of the best quality
- what your personal budget or personal health budget is, and
- describe the individual outcomes or goals that are agreed for you.
If you are receiving a direct payment, your Support Plan will clearly detail how it will be used and what the agreed outcomes are. Having a detailed Support Plan will enable regular checks on the direct payment to be carried out efficiently by a Social Care Professional or Health Care Professional.
Putting the adult first in decisions about their care
In Camden, a Support Plan is produced using a ‘what matters’ approach. This means Adult Social Care will write the Support Plan with you at the heart of all decisions that are made about you and what is important to you in meeting your care. We also work closely with you and your family or support network so that we:
- recognise your personal strengths and support you to build on it as well as recognise the strength of your social network
- are able to support you to stay connected to your community
- are able to work with you to identify problems and tackle them early. This means tackling the root causes of any problems, not just the symptoms.
Care review
Care and support regulations
For care that is met by direct payments, the Care and Support (Direct Payments) Regulations 2014 set out guidance for how an adult’s care is reviewed.
The Regulations state that:
- the purpose of a review is to ascertain whether the arrangement of a direct payment is an appropriate way to meet the adult’s needs
- the local authority must conduct a care review at least once within the first 6 months of the direct payment being made and thereafter at intervals not longer than 12 months
- where an agreement needs to be reached regarding the outcome of the review, the local authority must take all reasonable steps to reach an agreement with the person concerned. If person lacks capacity to reach an agreement, then the person who is authorised under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 to make decisions about the person’s needs for care and support, will be involved, or where there is no such person, any person who appears to the local authority to be interested in the adult’s welfare.
What to expect in a care review and who is involvedA review is an opportunity for everyone involved in the adult’s care to understand any changes to their health or social care needs and give their views on how well they think the care is being met.
A review takes plan annually or just after a year. It aims to ensure the Support Plan is working well so that the adult’s care continues to be of good quality
The review will include a discussion about your direct payment arrangement to check that the funds are used in the way that it was designed for, including:
- any risks to your safety and welfare in regards to taking a direct payment. This is for safeguarding purposes to prevent any potential abuse to people who use a direct payment
- how the financial and business side of your direct payment is going and any amounts that have not been spent.
Who is involved in a care review
Adult Social Care is responsible for setting up and carrying out a care review. A review must involve:
- the person receiving the direct payment
- if the person lacks capacity, then the person who Adult Social Care considers it would be in the person’s best interest to involve
- the person managing the direct payment
- family, unpaid carers, or someone in the person’s support network
- anyone that the person has asked Adult Social Care to involve
Other people to involve may be:
- Personal (Care) Assistant that the person has employed
- People Plus – the commissioned Support Service
- Direct Payment Monitoring Team
- Independent Care Advocates, if they are involved
Getting a direct payment changed
If you need to make a change to your direct payment, please contact your Social Care Practitioner or Healthcare Professional.
Any changes to a direct payment needs to be updated on the Adult Social Care record management system so that all relevant teams are aware of changes to your care.
How to make a complaint
1. Camden Adult Social Care
If you are not satisfied with a service or decisions made by Adult Social Care, we ask you to raise it with a Team Manager or the Service Manager so that it can be resolved.
If you are still not happy with the decision, you are entitled to make a complaint using our Complaints procedure.
You can submit a complaint to the our Complaints Team in a number of ways:
Phone: 020 7974 5644
Text phone: 020 7974 6096
Email: [email protected]
E-form: https://www.camden.gov.uk/complaints
2. Personal (Care) Assistants
If you employ a Personal (Care) Assistant and are not satisfied with their performance, People Plus can provide advice and support on how you, as your staff’s employer, can address your concerns.
Contact People Plus
Phone: 0330 123 2815
Email: [email protected]
3. Agency staff
If you are not satisfied with the service received from a Care Worker supplied by an agency, please contact the Agency Manager to resolve it.
All Care Agencies are independently regulated by the Care Quality Commission, which ensures health and social care services in England provide people with safe, effective, high quality care.
If you are still not satisfied with the Agency’s service and the Agency is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), you can contact the CQC by email at [email protected].