Management Agreements with Care Providers
Extra Care Managers,
I would be really grateful for any help anyone can give me on the following:
- we are a Housing Provider who own couple of extra care schemes. Our staff manage the schemes and provide support but do not provide the care service. This is provided by the Council's Social Services Care team.
On the whole, this is working fine as we are committed to working in partnership to making sure the services provided to our customers is as integrated and seamless as possible (and have a management agreement in place to reflect this). However, I am currently in the process of reviewing this agreement as I do think it needs to be a bit more robust.
I would therefore be grateful if anyone out there who has a management agreement with their care provider would be willing to share this with me and if so, could send me a copy (my details are below).
Many thanks for any help that you can give
Sue
Sue Lewis
Head of Supported Housing Services
Pennine Housing 2000
Bull Green House
Bull Green, HALIFAX, HX1 2EB
www.ph2k.org.uk
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Just to add to Sue's request that I too would be grateful for any assistance in this matter. We are in the process of design and build of our first Extra Care scheme and I would prefer learning from you and getting it right from the start, rather than replicating mistakes already experienced by others.
Many thanks.
Ray Keane
Strategic Commissioner (Older People, Physical Disability and Sensory Needs)
Room 305
79 Camden Road
NW1 9ES
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We are in the process of developing a formal service agreement between one of our local councils (the housing provider) and our in-house home care
team; once this is finished and signed off I am sure there will be no
objection to sharing it. The service has actually been up and running for
a few months now and we have a set of operational guidelines which are working well so hopefully the overarching agreement shouldn't be too long in the gestation!
A couple of observations in the meantime. I do think that these sort of agreements are important and they must indeed be robust, but much more important, as I think your comments imply, is the quality of the
relationship between the parties and a shared philosophy and understanding about what the EC scheme is trying to achieve. A "topline" management agreement which does not include jointly agreed frontline operating protocols doesn't really do it for me! A scheme does not really work even though everyone is honouring their formal obligations, if, at a local level, operational staff are following the letter not the spirit of the agreement.
It therefore seems to me that the process of negotiating the agreement is as least as important as the agreement itself. At the end of this, the agreement should represent a summary of what has been agreed, but ideally, one shouldn't actually need to take it out of the drawer again (or not very
often) because there is a consensus about how things should operate and a good enough relationship has been established at both management and frontline level to ensure that any day to day problems can be resolved.
The bottom line, for me is, can a resident or service user approach any
member of staff on the scheme and get a sensible response to their problem (even if that is just to take the details and pass them on to the
appropriate person) or are they constantly told "it's not my job" or "I
don't have anything to do with that"?!
I too would be interested in seeing examples which have worked elsewhere - no such thing as perfection and we can all learn from each other!!!
Liz Alvey
Project Manager - Extra Care
Adults & Community Care
Surrey County Council
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Lancashire County Council Social Services Department have posted on their website their Agreement for the Provision of Sheltered Housing Accommodation and Support for Older Persons with Extra Care Needs to view along with some other materials on Extra Care Housing in Lancashire. You can access this on http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/social_services/adults/extra_care/
Dawn Butterfield
Social Services
Lancashire County Council