Social care sector staff strain

Staffing challenges continue across the services and in particular social care, a health chief has said.

Chief officer Ann Margaret Black made the comments in her report to the Clackmannanshire and Stirling Joint Board recently.

She said:“health and social care are facing the biggest challenges they have had at any time in my career.

“The whole system of care is under huge pressure and we are facing unprecedented challenges and the key focus of the Health and Social Care Partnership is to continue with the whole system working and to use data to help us understand pressure points.

“Work continues on the development of a whole systems performance dashboard, supported by planning colleagues from NHS Forthvalley.

“The performance indicators focus on delays to peoples discharge and improvement actions to be taken in NHS Forth Valley within the Delay Without Discharge whole systems improvement programme.”

Meanwhile, an initial pan-forthvalley reimagining care closer to home event took place in December.

It was well attended with ideas and suggestions being developed on how we can work better together to support more people at home.

A further event was held on March 2, where a programme of work is in development to improve access to a wide range of intermediate care services, supporting people at home or enabling them to return home, or to a homely setting.

The programme brings together leads from services to share awareness and understanding, agree priorities and enable a comprehensive set of benefits relating to prevention, early intervention, timely access to services, reducing duplication and bureaucracy and increasing capacity.