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Adult social care information and advice are essential and getting them right means that people are more likely to be able to make informed choices and access the right support at the right time and place. This can make a big difference for someone and ultimately can improve their health and wellbeing. It also helps councils to manage and prioritise their assessment processes and resources.
In partnership with councils and sector organisations, we are working to improve information and advice in adult social care. Part of our support for Working with People, this includes:
A toolkit to support councils
We have developed a toolkit to help councils improve their information and advice offers, drawing on and promoting existing good practice and innovation. This includes guidance on what good information and advice means, a maturity self-assessment, and resources across ten key themes for councils to use.
Community of practice
An online community of practice has been established on KHub for adult social care information and advice, including council information and advice managers, practitioners, front door teams, communications and digital/data leads, along with change/technology and other sector organisations, and people drawing upon care and support and unpaid carers.
This group meets virtually every two months. Future meetings can be joined via the ‘Events’ calendar on KHub. Previous meeting recordings and emerging toolkit resources are also available on KHub.
Over time we hope the community of practice will grow to include staff from other council services and partners, supporting unified approaches to information and advice.
Online events
With guest speakers and question and answer sessions, our online events programme covered various aspects of information and advice. Full recordings can be accessed from the ‘Webinars’ folder of the online community of practice library on KHub. Presentation materials can be accessed below:
Previous webinar presentations
- Care costs and self-funding, 15 September 2023
- Information, advocacy and rights, 18 September 2023
- Partnership working to promote community activities and support, 28 September 2023
- Digital inclusion as an enabler, 24 January 2024
- Care technology opportunities, 14 February 2024
- Co-producing and improving communication, 13 March 2024
Community navigation and social prescribing networks
We are working with community navigation and social prescribing networks to help build stronger links between their services and adult social care. We will explore the different approaches across the country and aim to develop a good understanding of where there are issues.
Direct support for councils
We worked with councils to improve adult social care information and advice services. Socitm Advisory provided support to a handful of councils across a range of themes in co-developing the information and advice maturity self-assessment.
Curators of Change is supporting further councils in their approaches to co-production, accessibility and equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Sector learning is being captured and will feed into the toolkit.