Devon was successful in it bid for its funding of £3.8 million in Round 2 of the Partnership for Older People’s Project. The implementation of the project started in May 2007 and the project will run through until May 2009 when the project will close. The services that are set up during the project will be self sustaining and will continue to operate once the project has closed
Older people in Devon have told the County Council and the local NHS that they want better access to services and social opportunities, and that we should work better together. We believe that we can achieve this and more.
New multi disciplinary teams including GP’s, Community Matrons, Community Nurses and Psychiatric Nurses, Physiotherapists, Social Workers and others, together with the local voluntary sector will work together across Devon in 23 GP Practice Clusters to:
- Help more people be healthier and independent for longer and support carers.
- Arrange things so that fewer older people have to go to hospital in an emergency when there is no real need for it, or have to go into residential care homes if they do not want to.
- Reach older people who scarcely use the services we have at presente.g. people in very rural areas, people who are from minority groups in the County e.g. from Chinese, Muslim or Polish backgrounds.
- Enable people to design and manage their own solutions rather than accept a lack of service or a service which is not what they want.
We have been impressed by the pilot Community Mentoring Schemes that have been set up through the Link Age Plus programme to tackle social exclusion among people aged 50 plus, particularly those who are "harder to reach" such as frailer people and people from minority communities. Older people and carers who have used these services in the pilot areas have benefited from them and enjoyed the results and so we intend to make them available across Devon. We intend to find out whether community mentoring offers a better approach for some people than traditional services which may not focus on isolation and loneliness.
Older people in Devon have told us that their number one priority for practical health services is access to affordable foot care and so we will be developing that in partnership with voluntary sector organisations.
More support will also be given to Devon’s 72,000 carers, nearly a quarter of whom are elderly.
Local Background
