We published Key to Care: The Report of the Burstow Commission on the Future of the Home Care Workforce in December 2014. Just before Christmas we summarised how well things had gone in terms of achieving our recommendations. (Spoiler alert: not so good.)
One of our key recommendations was around outcomes based commissioning. We wanted to explore a little more about why outcomes based commissioning remains an aspiration rather than a reality. Our suspicions are that time and task, is driven by the fact that only time of visit in home care is relatively easy to monitor. This is supported by a survey we carried out in late 2015. Real time outcomes monitoring, building up a day-by-day picture of how people’s needs are changing and whether their outcomes are being achieved hasn’t been possible.
We are now working with a service designer and tech and information consultancy to design and deliver a tool which helps build up the picture on outcomes and needs in real time. With this information, commissioners will be able to focus on outcomes and needs, rather than task and time.
On 8 March, we’re hosting a round table event to explore the barriers to implementing outcomes based commissioning and how some councils are overcoming them. We will also be introducing CoCare, the tech we’ve been working on. The event is invitation only, but contact me at ingrid.koehler@lgiu.org to find out more or to enquire about a place.
