Learning Disability NetworkNotes

Monday 2nd December2013

Who was here:
Mark Humble
Victoria Bowman
Steven Roberts
Corinne Elliott
Hilary Slater
Jim Boaden
James McElheran
Martin Gallagher
Lisa Holdsworth
Neil Wadge
Kevin Kelly
Karen Reed
Julie Hopkinson
Ian Mwanga
Neil Thomas
Louise Haymer / Commissioning Lead, Darlington Council(Co-Chair)
Peoples Parliament, (Co Chair)
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Carers Lead, DarlingtonCouncil
Area Manager, Potensial
Head of Service, Darlington Council
Team Manager, TeesEsk & WearValley Trust
Senior Practitioner, Darlington Council
Health Facilitation
Health Facilitation
Healthwatch Darlington
Apologies:
Vicki Pattinson
Ann Workman
Michaela Hopps
Jackie Hiles
Councillor Copeland
Luke Hardwick
Harry Longmoor
Nicola Bennett
Donna Wright
Andrea Goldie
Sean Thomas / Team Manager, 26+ Team, Darlington Council
Assistant Director, Adult Social Care
TeesEsk & WearValley Trust
Assistant Chief Executive, DAD
Cabinet Member
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Peoples Parliament
Healthwatch Darlington
Leisure Services, Darlington Council

Victoria Bowman, Co Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting. Victoriareminded everyone of the rules and read out a list of the people who couldn’t come today.

Mark Humble went through the notes of the meeting on the 7th of October 2013to check they were right. We agreed they were.

Things we said we would do at the last meeting.

  • The Peoples Parliament to send a copy of the GP letter to Mark to share with the Network.
  • A list of the support available needs to be put together that sets out the type, where it is, how to access it and how much it costs. Healthwatch can help with this.
  • Andrea to liaise to talk to the Peoples Parliament

At the last Network meeting we asked the Health Team to come and tell us about what support might be available to people with high support needs.

Karen Reed told us about some of the support that is available

This includes a team of people based at Hundens Lane that includes:

  • Community Nurses
  • Health Facilitators
  • Psychologists
  • Psychiatrist
  • Support workers

There is also something called the Intensive Home Support Team.

All together these people work to support people where they live. So if someone has got a mental health problem or there has been a change in their behaviour that makes it difficult to support them this team can work together to keep people at home and help people get through their difficulties. This support can be very flexible and the team works with whoever is supporting the person whether it’s paid support or family carers. This can work with people as they are in hospital as well.

There is also a service called the assertive outreach team who can also offer people specialist support.

Some people sometimes need to be admitted into a hospital and if that’s needed there are four beds available in Durham. People usually don’t stay in hospital any longer than they need to be.

We asked Karen about our worry that sometimes people don’t go back home from Hospital. She said that in her experience it is about half and half, most people who don’t go home either choose not to.

We want to make sure that all of the good support that people get at the moment is not lost with any changes.

We then had a discussion about what some of the key things about what good support would include:

  • People would get the support they need in or close to Darlington. (We did note that sometimes people are close e.g. in Durham, however if carers don’t drive it is sometimes hard to visit)
  • Carers could get their transport costs or transport provided to visit people away from the area.
  • Everyone who is admitted into Hospital for assessment and treatment or has complex support needs has access to an advocate. The advocate needs to see the person in the place where they are including where they sleep.
  • People need the information they needs available in easy read and in other ways
  • Citizen experts and peer support needs to be a big part of how people are supported. This might include service checking and advocacy
  • People going into specialist health services like assessment and treatment should have a Hospital Passport.

Other things

We think that there are some gaps in support – e.g. someone may not need to be in hospital any more, however the support they need to return home or an alternative is not available to help them get better. If this was available we think it would make it better for people. Mark said that this is sometimes called “step down”

Things need to be better joined up and meetings need to include people like housing if they are needed.

A plan for someone leaving the hospital should be the first thing that is discussed when people are admitted for assessment and treatment

There should be some support providers locally who are trained to support people with complex support needs, who will support people even when things are a bit tricky. They should be paid for their skills.

ACTION: We will talk about this again at the next Network Meeting

Mark gave an update:

•The Self Assessment needs to be sent back by the 6th of December.

•There was a Big Health Event Dayon 15th of November at Durham Indoor Bowling Club. We got information that was helpful for the assessment.

•The Peoples Parliament have written some real life stories to add to the report

Action: Update at the next meeting

Lisa gave us a brief update:

Life Stages Carers Network:

4 carers attended the meeting on 10th September. Ruth Ritchie from TEWV attended to talk about health, including health checks and health action plans and Jacki Hiles attended from DAD to talk about the Carers Support Service, which is starting a number of new carers groups.

The next meeting of the Life Stages Carers Network will be on 10th January when there will be a speaker from Latimer Hinks (solicitors) about wills and trusts.

Feedback from Carers re Priority 5 – ‘Family and carers are real partners’:

Carers have discussed carer involvement at Life Stages Carers’ Network meetings and raised the following:

a) Fewer family Carers attending meetings. The possible reasons for this were discussed. These included existing carers’ circumstances changing and no new carers joining. It was felt that this may be because carers today receive more support than previously and/or are happy with the services their sons/daughters are receiving. Another reason suggested was that carers feel that attending meetings is unproductive. Some group members commented that they felt less involved than they had in the past with e.g. consultations, inspections and tender processes and that they also felt that decisions had been made before carers’ views were sought.

Carers felt that the involvement of carers should be proactive, rather than reactive, and that employed staff should tap into carers’ expertise.

b) Ways of supporting carers to be real partners - carers felt that this should be achieved both in relation to day to day work in relation to their sons and daughters and at a strategic level.

A number of issues were raised re strategic involvement including:

The need to include parent carers

  • How to achieve a regular and ongoing commitment to involvement by parent carers?
  • How to include a range of parent and family carers?
  • How to involve parents and family carers in a structured way?

Carers asked if the Council saw equality impact assessments as “involvement”, as carers who took part in the discussions didn’t think that they were.

Action: If Network members have views or ideas on how more carers could be identified/recruited to be more involved let Lisa know.

The Peoples Parliament continues to make links with other Parliaments. They gave an update on their recent work:

  • Harry has attended the latest National Forum organised by Skills for People. The aim of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of the meetings reducing from 3 to 2 a year. This is because of the costs involved. Harry now has a disabled person’s railcard that he uses to keep the costs down.
  • Harry and Donna attended a meeting with the 26+ Life stages Team to promote the work of the Parliament.

Harry, Nicola and Donna attended the Big Health Day in Durham. Harry and Nicola worked with Mark Humble to discuss the services in Darlington which support people to keep healthy, stay safe and live well. We think more needs to be done to improve the support that people get.

•In July 2013 – Darlington were asked to complete a self assessment about how it has made the Autism Strategy happen.

•Darlington was asked some questions and they were asked to say how they were doing used the Red, Amber, Green idea

The Self Assessment says:

•We need to get better any getting the right information about people – we have some but it needs to be better.

•We need to get better at talking to and listening to people with autism

•We need to get better at talking to and listening to carers.

•We need to get better at helping the community understand about Autism and the things it can do to make sure people with autism can play their part.

•We need to do more to understand the needs of older people with autism

•We need to get better at working together with the Criminal Justice System

•We need to support more people into work

•We need to get better at making sure people have training about autism

ACTION: We had planned to talk about this at this meeting, however we need more time. There needs to be an action plan that says how these things will be done: to discuss at the next Network

  • We are still a bit concerned that there are fewer people attending the Network than used to. Mark has written to everyone asking them to say that they will be coming to future meetings and most people have said that they will be attending.

Action: Network to draft a letter to send out to people

  • We need to think about a new chair as we agreed it would be for a year
  • We need the dates for next year

3rd February 1pm – 3pm

The Dolphin Centre

Darlington

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