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  • Living well at home

Chinese Wellbeing Outstanding cultural care

Organisation

Chinese Wellbeing is a registered charity which has been supporting Liverpool's Chinese community for over 30 years. Our aims are to:

  • Enable independent living
  • Promote physical, mental, social and economic wellbeing
  • Reduce social isolation and loneliness
  • Support community involvement
  • Enable a better route for community engagement
  • Reduce health inequalities
  • Provide information to our clients, the Government, local agencies and the community at large

What is the innovation?

We are a Chinese led organisation, 6 out of 8 Trustees and 32 out of 33 staff are of Chinese origins. We have a team of multilingual staff who are trained in health and social care to provide person centred services such as home care commisioned by Liverpool City Council, which was CQC rated outstanding in 2017 and 2019. Our home care is supported by a suite of supplementary wellbeing services developed in response to community engagement and consultations, these include:

  • Post diagnostic dementia support services such as Dementia Peer Support Network and Tea House Reminiscence.
  • Health & wellbeing activities such as exercise, singing, arts and crafts, healthy eating sessions and blood pressure monitoring.
  • Health awareness raising/talks on topics such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory illnesses, dementia
  • Personal wellbeing services, a chargeable service providing a range of support to enable independent living. We ensure people stay connected, keep active and develop new skills including digital access.

What is the problem this innovation solves?

We have an ageing local Chinese population who find it difficult to access mainstream support services due to language and cultural barriers. They have worked long and unsociable hours for years in traditional industries such as catering and have had limited opportunities to develop their English language skills and little experience of communicating with the rest of society hence many lack the confidence to step outside of the Chinese comfort zone.

Social isolation and loneliness are contributory factors to deteriorating health and wellbeing and so we provide a lifeline through our Evergreen Club. Many service users live with long term health conditions and rely upon our staff to educate them in managing these conditions. From the outset of the pandemic we have kept them informed on government guidelines, changing regulations, infection control, testing and vaccinations particulary for those shielding and when information was not readily available in community languages.

Solution

We are a trusted community organisation commisioned by the Local Authority to deliver home care. In addition, we provide a model of care which goes beyond the standard task based care package by providing language and culturally appropriate health and wellbeing wrap around services. We are rooted in the community we serve and committed to delivering person centred care. We are a not for profit organisation.

This model of care works to keep people in independent living for as long as possible. We ensure that the over 55's are given every opportunity to live their life to the full and engage in the 5 Ways to Wellbeing.

Evidence base

We are regulated by the Care Quality Commission. For the last two consecutive inspections we have been rated as outstanding.

Annual customer satisfaction surveys are conducted for our home care service which are audtied by the Local Authority and by CQC. We monitor any complaints and learn from mistakes. We are audited by the Local Authority to ensure regulatory compliance and quality assurance.

We ask for regular completion of feedback forms from our service users for grant monitoring purposes and to ensure quality of service delivery. Every six months, we hold focus groups with members of our Evergreen Club in order to agree and set the programme of activities to ensure members are given a voice in determining how the service is developed.

Expected impact

We help to improve the lives of our Chinese elders by:

  • Reducing feelings of social isolation and loneliness
  • Providing health awareness,improved self care and help with prevention strategies reducing social stigma relating to common mental health conditions
  • Talking through coping strategies and providing emotional support
  • Help with accessing mainstream support services and reducing health inequalities helping people to remain connected to the community
  • Helping people to feel cared for, not forgotten, and valued
  • Help with ongoing concerns directly due to the pandemic
  • Supporting to get back on track with the 5 Ways to Wellbeing
  • Reducing the need for secondary care interventions
  • Helping to remain in independent living for as long as possible

Stage/spread

We are a registered charity which was established in 1989 originally under the name of Merseyside Chinese Community Development Association and in response to one of the first pieces of research conducted by The Kings Fund in to the needs of the Chinese population living in Britain. Liverpool has the oldest Chinese community in Europe which today is mainly Cantonese speaking.

Our staff live in the local community and whilst we do serve neighbouring Local Authority areas, we are limited operationally to certain geographical areas with regards to our home care service. Any grant funding received from the Liverpool City Council or Liverpool CCG is often restricted to residents living within their post code boundaries.

What would councils/health organisations/local areas need to do or have in place to enable it to develop?

The model of care and services we provide are heavily dependent upon our success of securing grant funding and donations which often have to contribute to core costs to subsidise the home care service. We do not deliver the optimum number of hours required to acheive economies of scale and Local Authorities will not pay a premium rate for our language and cultural competency skills.

We are focused on the preventative health care model and have successfully delivered a number of grant funded health initiatives including an 8 month diabetes programme, mental health and wellbeing service, blood pressure monitoring service, crises intervention,welfare benefit checks, post diagnostic dementia support services, Evergreen Club, Covid Community Champion. Over the years, we have received relatively short term funding from both NHS and LA's and despite high value low cost outcomes, there is little sustainability in the funding to enable services to continue beyond the end grant period.

What would kill it?

Over the years, we have enjoyed very low staff turnover rates. Our care staff originally applied for the role as they want to give back to the community. However, several staff have recently left due to retirement and others are now approaching that stage in their lives. Our home care service is dependent upon being able to recruit and train new care staff with the same commitment, values and skills base. If the Local Authority cannot fund the actual cost of delivering care, and grants become increasingly competitive, we may have to make some difficult decisions as we have been partially funding services from reserves which is no longer a viable option.

Where to get more information

Contact: Di Burbidge, Service Development Manager

Email: diburbidge@chinesewellbeing.co.uk

Telephone: 07941 369 409

Website: www.chinesewellbeing.co.uk (website and content currently being refreshed)