Inspection of Older Adults Services: Isle of Anglesey County Council

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

Key Findings

Strengths

Well-being - we found communication with people who approach the local authority for support is respectful and strengths based, it is often collaborative, and mostly built upon an equal relationship.

People – voice and choice – the local authority benefits from the leadership of the chief executive and leader of the council. Both have a strong grasp of strategic direction and are able to hold informed discussions about operational services.

Partnerships, integration and co-production – we found operational services mostly working well together to support people to remain at home for as long as possible. Communication is good between practitioners and services are creatively mixed and matched to meet people’s needs.

Prevention and early intervention – the local authority firmly has prevention on their agenda. There are many positive examples of practitioners providing and arranging care and support for people in their communities to prevent them from reaching crisis.

Areas for improvement

Well-being – we identified a need to ensure a prudent approach to the use of resources directly translates into people getting the right response at the right time. This includes ensuring team structures and roles make the best use of social work skills, supervision and improving the quality and consistency of social work recording.

People voice and choice – the local authority must ensure that the capacity of carers to provide care is sustainable and that they comply with their general duty to promote the well-being of the carer and the person cared for.

Partnerships, integration and co-production – we recommend that partnership working must move beyond projects that are funded through Welsh Government initiatives and inject urgency into developing sustainable services.

Prevention and early intervention –more work is required to ensure the reablement service has sufficient professional support to underpin a positive approach to risk and deliver positive outcomes for people with a wider range of needs.

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 Isle of Anglesey County Council.

To view all our findings and recommendations read the full report below.