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Inspection of Older Adults Services: Denbighshire County Council

Our findings and recommendations for Older Adult Services.

We undertook an inspection jointly with Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) (External link), and explored how well Denbighshire County Council is promoting independence and preventing escalating needs for older adults. 

Key Findings

Strengths

Well-being – we found people can be increasingly confident the local authority recognises adults are the best people to judge their own wellbeing.

People – voice and choice the local authority has an adequate understanding of how people can be empowered by information, advice and assistance and by being involved in the design and operation of services.

Partnerships, integration and co-production – we found willingness to try new approaches and work with key partners is demonstrated through the development of a SPoA (Single Point of Access), Talking Points, Community Navigators and Community Resource Teams (CRTs).

Prevention and early intervention – preventing or delaying the development of care and support needs is closely aligned to other local authority responsibilities, including housing, leisure and environmental health. 

Areas for improvement 

Wellbeing – senior managers must ensure individuals feel they are an equal partner in their relationship with safeguarding professionals who work to protect them from abuse and neglect. 

People voice and choice – we found the benefits of a strengths based approach to enabling people to have their voices heard needs to be improved by closer compliance with the SSWBA 

Partnerships, integration and co-production – strategic managers need to ensure services and resources are used in the most effective and efficient way. 

Prevention and early intervention – we identified the lack of availability of domiciliary care services is resulting in some people not receiving the care and support they need. This has been a long standing issue in some parts of the county and requires action to prevent further carer breakdown and increasing pressure on staff in reablement services and community health services.

Next steps

CIW and HIW expect the local authority and local health board to give attention to areas for improvement in the report. CIW will monitor progress through its on-going performance evaluation activity with Denbighshire County Council. To view all our findings and recommendations read the full report below.