Major restructure for Bristol's Home Care

More older and disabled people will be able to continue to live independently in their own homes instead of having to move into nursing or residential care, thanks to a major restructuring of the city's home care services.

The council's Cabinet last night scrapped earlier proposals made under a previous administration of the city council and instead agreed new plans for restructuring the service.

The agreed restructuring will help the council continue the progress it is already making to increase the overall number of hours of home care being delivered in the city.

Recent improvements have already seen the number of home care hours provided in total each week by the council's in-house team and its commissioned independent providers rise from 19,000 to 23,000.

The new changes to the in-house team are designed in part to help the council work towards its ultimate goal of delivering at least another 10,000 hours a week overall and, therefore, become one of the top performing authorities in the country.

At the heart of the restructuring is the creation of an innovative new STAR (Short Term Assessment and Re-ablement) service that will work with all new users for an initial period of up to six weeks.

During that time, new users will be carefully provided with intensive support to help them regain their independence wherever possible.

They will be carefully assessed to ensure that, where required, the right kind of long-term help and support can be identified and delivered to meet their personal needs.

The new STAR service would be part of the overall in-house Home Care Service but would work in practice as a separate team.

Around 80 full-time Home Care assistants would move to work within the new STAR service, while some 280 part-time workers - in 180 'full time equivalent' posts - would continue to work within the main in-house Home Care team.

Low-level shopping, cleaning and laundry services would in future be delivered through a reliable and responsible independent provider - freeing up the in-house Home Care teams to concentrate on more personal care.

They would also be able to provide specialist services to clients with physical and sensory impairments, mental health needs and learning difficulties.

Under the new-look service, clients' needs would be more regularly re-assessed and the service would be able to take referrals at weekends - giving people in need the opportunity to get help more quickly.

It is anticipated that the changes would be achieved without any compulsory job losses, with most existing staff employed in the new-look service or redeployed within the council.

The restructuring has the support of the main trades unions.

Councillor Peter Hammond, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Care and Communities, said: "Bristol City Council is committed to helping more older people live as independently as possible for as long as possible in their home, in accordance with their wishes.

"Increasing the amount of Home Care we provide is not only a major improvement to the service we provide, it is also vital to our plans to significantly reduce the number of people entering nursing and residential care, who, with help, could continue to enjoy a more independent life."

He added: "These plans have the support of staff, trades unions, management, service users and other stakeholders.

“They have all worked extremely hard and constructively with us to help come up with a workable way forward that will really benefit older and disabled people in Bristol."