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  • Living well at home
  • Regaining independence

Wellbeing Teams Radically different care and support at home

What is the problem this innovation solves?

Care for older and disabled people at home is not working for many people (25% increase in complaints, 25% services require improvement or are inadequate) or staff (staff turnover can be up to 40%, front-line pay is low typically on zero-hour contracts). Poor care at home contributes to greater demand on hospitals and long-term care.

Solution

  • Improve people’s experience by creating small, neighbourhood self-managed teams to help people regain and retain independence and provide excellent compassionate person-centred care. Teams include Community Circle Connectors to help people be connected in communities doing what matters to them, and therefore reducing loneliness too.
  • Deliver improved staff experience through small teams, paid at or above living wage, who self-manage. Coaches support teams focusing on culture and fostering reliability, kindness, trust and creativity.
  • This is affordable through the self-management structure reducing layers of hierarchy and automating routine processes with bespoke IT.

Evidence base

Inspired by Buurtzorg, Netherlands who have 10,000 staff in similar teams and evaluation shows excellent satisfaction rates for people and staff, as well as low overhead costs of 8 against typical industry costs of 25%. Wellbeing Teams overhead in 11%.

Expected impact

Improved quality of life for older and disabled people, reduced demand in the wider health and care system, better staff experience leading to lower turnover.

Stage and spread (where it is/how much is there?)

After testing the model with six pilot teams in England and Scotland, there are six new teams starting in Greater Manchester with a commitment to four more within six months. There are 4 ways to get support to move in this direction. 

  1. Materials available as free download under a Creative Commons licence. 
  2. Paid membership site for people wanting support 
  3. Packages of support codesigned with provider/organisation in both health and social care 
  4. A new provider, Wellbeing Teams Ltd, hoping to scale from 6 – 600 teams.

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

Wellbeing Teams support people who have funding from personal budgets or who are self-funders in line with The Care Act. It is helpful to have an Individual Service Fund framework in place.

What would kill it?

Social Workers and Commissioners continuing to think about home care in relation to slots of time and prescribing this, rather than thinking in relation to outcomes and indicative budgets.

Where to go for more information