Adult Social Care Local Account highlights great success with Initial Response Team and our new Community Talking Points

Next week, Cabinet members will review our Adult Social Care Local Account for 2023/24, highlighting some of the great things our services have achieved over the past year.

Developed with our Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) co-production group, our annual Local Account tells the story of Adult Social Care in Barnsley. The report reflects on our performance, including against key national indicators, and sets out our aspirations for the year ahead.

We worked closely with TLAP to develop this year’s Local Account, running sessions to hear from people with lived experience of Adult Social Care and local carers. Their insights helped us better understand what’s working well for people and where we can continue improving.

There’s been a lot to celebrate in Adult Social Care in Barnsley over the past year, including our Supported Employment’s LGC Award win and our positive Peer Review feedback.

As we developed this year’s Local Account, TLAP highlighted the improvements made to our Initial Response Team as a real strength in what we’ve achieved this year.

This includes the introduction of their rapid response function, helping us prioritise referrals and get people the right support sooner, and Community Talking Points.

Taking place across our community libraries, these sessions are enabling more people to attend Adult Social Care assessments at a time and place that suits them. Other key highlights from this year’s Local Account include:

• We’re seeing great results in supporting people to enjoy happy, fulfilling lives, being the tenth highest performing council nationally for people’s quality of life score.
• We’re ranked eleventh best nationally for the overall satisfaction of the people we support, and we’re beating national averages for the overall satisfaction of carers.
• Introducing our Care Home Quality Team, who are working with providers to make sustainable improvements to their support, improving care across Barnsley.
• Developing our Safeguarding Locality Team, taking a community-based model for how we handle safeguarding referrals and make sure people are safe.
• Continued growth of our Preparing for Adulthood offer, which is reducing waiting times for assessments and supporting effective transitions for young people.

Our Adult Social Care Local Account also sets out how we plan to continue improving our support. Over the next year, our priorities will include:

• Improving our information, advice and guidance offer, focusing on getting the right information in the right places and developing the right support for carers.
• Building on the successes of our Community Talking Points to reach more people.
• Developing new market shaping and commissioning plans, making sure we have the right options locally to meet the changing needs of our communities.

Councillor Jo Newing, Cabinet Spokesperson for Place Health and Adult Social Care, said: “In Barnsley, we’re committed to making sure our communities get the right support to continue living healthy, fulfilling lives in the places they call home. Our Adult Social Care teams are really at the heart of this, promoting people’s wellbeing, independence and safety.

“I’m delighted to see their brilliant achievements highlighted in our Local Account, showing how our passionate teams are doing things differently to place people at the heart of their care.

“This report provides a really valuable insight into what’s working well and where we can continue to grow our support, and we remain committed to learning from our communities.”

You can read this year’s Adult Social Care Local Account in our Cabinet papers.

After next week’s Cabinet meeting, taking place on Wednesday 28 May, you will also be able to find the full report on our Adult Social Care performance webpage.

We’d love to continue hearing feedback from our communities to help shape the support and services we offer. You can share your feedback and suggestions by filling out our online survey.