Cheshire East Council
Cheshire East Council’s Adult Social Care Directorate, like many other Public Sector organisations, was operating in a context of unprecedented challenge, with increasing expectations for more outcome-driven services, combined with reducing budgets, the expectation of personalised services, increasing demand and a challenging policy environment. Recognising this, they engaged the C.Co team to help them to think differently about how to deliver their services.
Our starting point was to consider the local context and the legislative requirements of the Care Act and to help scope the need to develop greater diversity in the care market to ensure that there was a wide range of high-quality services.
We helped to ensure Cheshire East’s services were accessible, diverse and responsive, enabling choice and control. There was a desire for Adult Social Care and the Council to be a commissioning-led organisation, moving away from traditional models of social care towards a joint health and social care ethos, integrating operational and commissioning services wherever possible. Crucially, there was a need to substantially reduce adult social care spending over the subsequent three years.
Our approach
Engagement and involvement of those closest to the service, i.e. the staff, service users and their carers, was a central part of the C.Co approach. An engagement programme was therefore devised in order to include these audiences in a co-production and co-design exercise to help inform the future of Care4CE services. A range of methods was used to engage staff, customers and communities from services under review to ensure they had the opportunity to shape the specification and comment on potential options and delivery models.
The feedback from staff, customers and communities, was, amongst other information, used to inform the future specification for Care4CE services. Trade unions were also kept updated and actively engaged on a monthly basis. Over 700 staff were engaged along with over 550 service users, carers and residents.
The outcome
Using this evidence as a basis, we helped to build the case by identifying the best way forward for each of the services in scope – whether that be in-house, commissioned from the market, integrated with partners, through a trading company, a mixed economy of the above or, should evidence show, decommissioned. Our analysis and considerations helped to shape the business case and develop the best options for the future.
At C.Co, we support organisations with solutions for all aspects of change management, enabling successful improvement and transformation across the public sector. If you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch with us today.
