Key Theme One

Key Theme 1: Ensuring that people with longer term health and social care needs experience care and support that is truly personalised to their individual circumstances, strengths and needs, and optimises their independence.

This section of the strategy tells you:

What we have identified as the key priorities relating to this theme;
Why we have identified these key priorities;
What we plan to do to make a positive difference.

Many of the plans set out in this and other themes in the Ageing Well strategy are ambitious, and will require close and effective partnerships across a range of local organisations from the statutory, community and private sectors and, crucially, with local communities for these ambitions to be realised.

Key theme 1 directly relates to the ‘Developing an integrated system’ priority in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. It is about health and social care services working together to plan and deliver services that are easier for older people to access and navigate, and that respond to an individual in a way that is personal to their individual circumstances, strength and needs. This includes understanding the existing support networks that an individual has and building on those to maximise independence.

Update Spring 2018

The delivery plan for this theme is being developed as part of wider work being undertaken by Tower Hamlets Together (our health and social care partnership which is working to integrate the health and care experience for residents) to agree joint plans for improving the care and support experience for older people.

We expect these plans to be developed by mid-Summer 2018.

The government’s Green Paper on the future of social care is also scheduled to be published in Summer 2018 and we will post a link to this and our initial thoughts on the impact it will have on social care in Tower Hamlets shortly after publication.

Finally, we are currently looking at what changes we can make to our social care teams working with older people to improve their responsiveness and to ensure they are working as closely as possible with health colleagues. Once these changes have been agreed we will provide information here about what difference the changes will make and a link to information about how to contact Adult Social Care.

Links and key documents

For further information, please contact keith.burns@towerhamlets.gov.uk.