How can we improve the health and independence of older
people living in Croydon?
Summary report from Thursday 3rd July feedback event
Introduction
Croydon Clinical Commissioning Group and Croydon Council have been undertaking
a range of activities over the last few months to give local residents the opportunity
to say what can be done to improve the health and independence of older people in
Croydon.
Over 400 people from around the borough have been involved so far and contributed
to discussions in four key areas, which are of particular importance to older people:
1. keeping healthy and well
2. staying independent
3. long-term conditions
4. unplanned care.
We would like to thank everyone who participated. We value every opinion and took
care to ensure that all views were recorded and carefully considered.
The event at Bernard Weatherill House on Thursday 3 rd July was an opportunity to
update local residents on the work we have been doing, and to let people know what
has happened to all the information we have gathered.
What you told us
We discussed how the views of the public, patients and carers have been used by
working groups to design a set of outcomes, or goals, which will be used to measure
and improve the quality of care provided to older people. A copy of the slides from
the event, and the outcomes that have been developed with the help of local
residents, can be download here.
You can read a summary of the ideas, issues and suggestions raised at the meeting
below. Additional feedback, comments or queries can be emailed to
[email protected]
All the contributions made at the event will help us plan services that meet the health
and care needs of older people in Croydon.
Question and Answer session
Your question
How can we take account of the fact that
people are different and want different
outcomes.?
Our response
Paula Swann, Chief Officer, Croydon
CCG said, “clearly what we are doing is
hugely ambitious. We are trying to take a
health service focused on delivering
activity, that’s focused on managing ill
health, in crisis often, and turn it on its
head, so we can focus on keeping
people as fit and healthy as possible
using the combined resources of both
health and social care for the people of
Croydon.
“This is quite a fundamental shift. We are
trying to use the outcomes that you have
identified to shift the behaviour of
services. And we can’t do this overnight,
it will take time, we will need to follow a
phased approach, but our objectives are
to get services to think about how they
can support people better, to keep them
as fit and healthy as they can, to focus
on prevention, to focus on supporting
people with long-term conditions, but at
the same time being available to support
people in crisis and helping to support
and manage that crisis.
“For an individual that is about putting in
place individual care plans to help people
with their individual needs. Focusing on
outcomes will support that process to
provide much more personalised care. “
How does the work of the Health and
Wellbeing Board fit in with this process of
designing outcomes for older people’s
care?
Paula Swann said, “This is all about
joining up thinking and working together
more collaboratively so it is important
that we are aligned across all the
services in Croydon. That is why this is a
joint project between the council and
CCG and why we have involved people
from many different sectors and
organisations in this work.
“As part of the next steps in this project
we will be engaging with the health and
wellbeing board to talk through the plans
in more detail. In fact, I know we have a
couple of members here tonight.”
You say that you’ve engaged with 400
residents, out of a total of something like
395,000 people in the borough, to my
knowledge you haven’t been to faith
groups or to Patient Participation Groups
(PPGs). How representative of Croydon
are those 400 residents?
Andrew Hobson, Communications and
Engagement Lead, said, “We have done
a lot of work to try and make sure that
the people we have spoken to are
representative of people in Croydon. We
have worked very closely, for example,
with the BME forum, who did over 180
interviews with groups that they are
connected with, so of those over 400
people, actually just under 50% of those
are from Black and Minority Ethnic
communities which are actually a big
proportion of the community in the North
of the Borough. I’ll actually circulate
these figures because we have them so
everyone who is here today – we’ll make
sure you have these numbers, but
around 60% of the people that we spoke
to were aged over 65.
“And while we acknowledge that 400 out
of 300,000-odd in Croydon isn’t
anywhere near everybody, and it’s
impossible for us to speak to everyone,
we have made sure it is proportional and
representative as possible, and we have
spoken to as many people in as many
different ways as possible. So, for
example, we’ve done lots of one-on-one
interviews, gone out to lunch clubs, and
gone into residential homes.”
Hannah Miller, Executive Director of
Adult Services, Health and Housing.
at Croydon Council, said, “it’s worth
saying that there are absolutely no
surprises in what’s come out of the
exercise, because it reflects what has
come out of the consultation that we
have been doing for a number of years
with older people. So, for example, we
have run events, we have run
conferences, and we’ve got the older
person’s network. People don’t want to
be in hospital, they don’t want to be in
residential care, they want to be in their
own homes, they want to stay fit and
well, they want to have a good quality of
life. I know I certainly do!”
Have you got a plan in terms of how do
you monitor these outcomes and how do
you review it as no-one has actually
mentioned that. Would you look at that in
6 months, once a year, once a month, to
be sure the outcomes are delivered.
Paula Swann said, “Absolutely, and what
we would do is build the outcomes, build
the indicators, build the key performance
indicators into our contracts with the
providers of our services so that we are
reviewing these on a regular basis.
Importantly we need to incorporate
feedback from patients, the public,
people being cared for, carers, to advise
us to whether or not these outcomes are
being met.
You seem to have ignored blind people. I
came along to the first meeting, and have
asked for materials to be provided in
large print. This has not happened. I
would also like to know how many blind
people have been involved in this
project?
Paula Swann said, “I’m really sorry that
you have raised this and that we haven’t
actually followed it through, and when we
run these events in future we will make
sure that it is.”
Andrew Hobson said, “I don’t have the
number of blind people that we spoke to,
but we did talk to Croydon Vision, who
were involved so perhaps if you and I
could have a conversation later, after the
meeting, and actually we can work out
how we can do some more of that as
well.”
Why haven’t you involved Patient
Participation Groups more?
Andrew Hobson said, “We have heard
loudly and clearly not just today, but
before, how important Patient
Participation Groups are and we have
put in place a package of measures that
we want to deliver over the next year to
improve the way that we work with those
groups.”
Group discussion
How can we measure the impact of the outcomes? How will we know it is working?
Attendees split into groups to come up with ways we could measure the impact of
the outcomes to make sure they are working. The following options were put forward
and discussed
Listening to the views of local residents
 Take account of people’s personal experience
 Hosting focus groups
 Working with Patient Partition Groups
 Monitoring patient feedback
 Visiting people in residential homes to find out their views
 Training patient to engage at every level
 Training healthcare professionals to communicate and listen
 Feedback questionnaires from carers
 People are more aware of all the services available
 Surveys
 Patient must be involved from the very beginning of services at every level
Monitoring data
 Decreasing complaints
 Falling obesity statistics
 Less people dying unnecessarily
 People living more active and fulfilling lives
 Move visible and active over 65s in Croydon
 Change in trends around diabetes, obesity etc
Looking at the impact across the health and social care system
 Increased use of voluntary sector organisations
 Reduced need for mental health services
 Reduced pressure on urgent care services
 Improved consistency of services
 The existence of a central point to track and oversee progress
 More social workers, GPs, and support workers
 More prevention, less treatment
 Reduced admissions and readmissions to hospital
 Less use of health and social service overall
 Services will be more patient focussed