Develop the Local Integrated Family Team
Last year we talked about the new Local Integrated Family Team (LIFT) made up of staff from Conwy, Denbighshire and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. It helps families with managing children and young people’s challenging behaviour at home. It has been fully operational for a year now, serving both counties with a staff team providing psychological, behavioural and intervention support.
Primarily, LIFT referrals seem to have been received for individuals with ASD, ADHD or attachment disorder traits, with a significant number waiting for neuro assessments. Members of the team have received Paediatric Autism Communication Training (PACT), Video Interaction Guidance and Positive Behaviour Support, all evidence-based interventions which support parents to manage challenging behaviour.
By December 2022 the team had received 175 referrals, so the demand for support is clear.
Create the Bwthyn y Ddôl Children’s Assessment Centre
In light of delays associated with the build of Bwthyn y Ddôl, the plans for which we have shared in previous reports, the team continue to work from our Council offices in Colwyn Bay. The team has an agreed referral and assessment pathway across Conwy and Denbighshire, and this partnership is working well.
Staff members originally based within our children’s home, Glan yr Afon, have been immersing themselves within the multi-disciplinary team and learning new therapeutic ways of working with children. We have been recruiting for the residential element of the service, in tandem with the staff being recruited by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.
By December 2022 the team had worked with seven families and avoided 1061 weeks in care across Conwy and Denbighshire.
In terms of the project to build the new assessment centre, we have selected a preferred bidder and are currently working on the contract award with a view to then agreeing on the design and target costs.
Once costs and funding have been agreed, we expect the development to take around 70 weeks, starting in May 2023 and ending in August 2024. We will, of course, update you on progress in next year’s report.
Working with Clwyd Alyn to provide accommodation in Llanrwst
As mentioned in last year’s report, we have worked alongside Clwyd Alyn Housing Association to develop three one-bedroom flats in Llanrwst. Two have been allocated to people accessing Disability Services, and one to the Vulnerable People Team. Both services worked jointly to identify three tenants who would be compatible with each other. All had low-level support needs requiring two to five hours of support a week.
The flats were completed to a very high standard, and available for move-in at the end of August 2022. We are pleased to say that the tenants moved in soon after.
Addressing the staffing challenges within our Older People Service
As was reported last year, our Older People Service continues to face unprecedented demand and capacity issues. Each one of the Community Resource Teams (CRTs) has long waiting lists of cases that are waiting for assessment by either a Social Worker or an Occupational Therapist. The teams are currently only able to allocate cases that are deemed urgent and every other request for assessment is triaged by managers and sent a delay letter. The teams are now routinely dealing with very complex cases that are often in crisis, whilst managing the additional difficulties when needing to commission care packages.
We currently have in excess of 100 hours of domiciliary care which we are unable to broker. Vulnerable individuals are duly being placed in care homes or are cared for at home by families or unpaid carers, some of whom are struggling to manage the caring role as a result of a care package not being available to support them. Despite these pressures we always endeavour to prioritise hospital discharges and have consistently maintained a low level of Delayed Transfers of Care for Conwy patients.
Within our Social Work teams we have been making use of locum and agency staff to absorb some of the workload demand, but due to the expense involved, this isn’t our favoured option. Our external partners are struggling to recruit and retain staff, and as a result have had to hand back care packages which they cannot deliver. These have been absorbed by our in-house teams, who are experiencing their own difficulties in recruiting staff.
Using some Regional Integration Funding we have established a peripatetic team using a recruitment/staffing agency. This has enabled us to create some additional capacity in one CRT area; we have managed to facilitate four people returning to their own homes from a care home placement and enabled one informal carer to return to work. An additional 300 hours of care will be available as a result of this work.
We successfully acquired some additional funding via a business case last year which enabled us to recruit five additional Social Work staff; one to each of the CRTs to support the increasing demand on our services.
We have also started using alternative means of attracting and recruiting new staff to our community support teams, with managers attending various community events and jobs fairs to promote careers in our services. This has had some impact, and we have recruited some new staff as a result.
Retaining and ensuring the wellbeing of our existing staff, who are all working under immense pressure, is a service priority, and through discussion with HR and staffing colleagues we have very recently managed to secure a session for staff to help them understand the impact of secondary trauma, and to explain about moral injury and the impact of that on staff.
We also implemented a mid-year fee review in October 2022 to increase provider fees with a view to enable them to increase staff wages. The implementation of the new domiciliary care commissioning model is also something we hope in time will have a positive impact on the capacity within the domiciliary care sector in Conwy.
If you, or someone you know, is interested in a career in Social Care, visit WeCare.Wales or Conwy Council’s jobs board
Settling into Canolfan Ffordd Douglas
Following the refurbishment of a Victorian school in the centre of Colwyn Bay we have seen an increase in calls and walk-ins for information, advice and assistance, and the number of third sector and other Local Authority services using the facilities to link up with families closer to home. These include:
- GIFT, providing holiday activities for people with a disability.
- The Domestic Abuse Safety Unit (DASU), providing advice and support, one to one meetings, and access to programmes such as ‘Freedom’ and ‘Own my Life’, as well as the ‘STAR’ programme for children who have suffered domestic abuse.
- Conwy Employment Hub, who offer advice and support about accessing learning and work. They have run cook and eat sessions from the centre.
- Youth Justice Service, providing targeted group work for under 16s around wellbeing, including one to one cooking sessions.
- Cymraeg i Blant, providing Welsh language sing-along sessions for parents, introducing Welsh into their homes.
- STAND under-five group sessions for parents and children with a disability, parent advice workshops, and the PEEP programme around developing early number skills through play.
- North Wales Integrated Autism Service providing drop-in support for adults and children.
- Local Integrated Family Team, supporting families with managing challenging behaviour at home.
- Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service pre-consultation appointments for young people on the neuro-development waiting list.
- Advanced Nurse Practitioner for health of children aged 4 to18 years.
- Breast feeding support group with a Flying Start midwife.
Engaging with the public during Covid-19 restrictions was challenging, however, once we were able to open to the public and start groups, we saw an increase in walk-ins.
Organisations were not aware of the facilities available to them at Canolfan Ffordd Douglas, so we invited them for viewings. GIFT in particular use the centre regularly to take advantage of the disabled facilities.
We’ll be engaging further with the community and local partners to develop a bespoke family offer, based on the identified need in Conwy’s central area.
