Talking Sense - Volume 45, No 4, Winter 99
Partnerships are a good way forward for Sense to develop services for older people
Everything Sense does is a partnership. It has to be. We are rarely the sole service provider, but usually part of a multidisciplinary team which may include other agencies, the service user, family and friends.
Recently we have been developing new partnerships. An important one is with Age Concern, with whom we now have a formal partnership agreement and a national steering group. The steering group is trying to source external funding which will enable older people to stay in their own home and enhance their quality of life.
Why is this necessary? Steve Alexander, Director of Operations, says, "At the moment community care is simply not working. It is often cheaper to put someone in a Home than to fund care at home, and the situation is getting worse as the ageing population grows. Most local authorities will no longer fund 'quality of life' services, although they will fund life and death services - a form of crisis management. So the whole system encourages dependency rather than independence."
Providing services into people's homes helps prevent them going unnecessarily into residential care. Practical things such as help with cleaning, cooking, transport, a handyman, as well as befriending and communicator-guide services can make a huge difference. In addition, preventative services such as healthy living centres can help diagnose sight and hearing difficulties early, so appropriate steps can be taken before things become critical.
Sense and Age Concern are also cooperating on research and evaluation studies: these include highlighting the inadequacies of community care and looking at good practice in Europe.
The benefits of partnership
"Both organisations can become stronger and more effective as a consequence of partnership," says Steve Alexander. "Where it works well both sides gain, learn from each other's skills and can go forward together. So while Age Concern want to tap into our knowledge of sensory impairment, as it becomes more prevalent, we want to find out about their years of experience providing care and services for older people. It was a very deliberate link for us to create as we move into providing services for a broader mainstream of older people with acquired dual sensory loss."
As well as seeking a partnership with a national children's organisation, Sense is also appraising other organisations it currently has contact with to clarify reasons for working with them and mutual gains.
On the horizon
Other possible partnerships are being discussed. Says Steve Alexander, "We have had exploratory meetings with 'The Gift' - a benefactor organisation for blind and partially sighted people. They have already provided a building for Sense service users, but recently we have been talking about new projects.
" They have looked at our Coventry Resource Centre and newly refurbished Boston Lodge to see whether there is a template to develop resource centres we can replicate across the country. Among other things these could offer an outreach service, respite service, befriending service, transport and social groups."
Employment initiative
A very different kind of partnership, with the private sector, is in the field of employment initiatives. Sense has been working to promote supported employment and recently held a business lunch attended by over 60 employers including Sainsburys and British Telecom. They all pledged their support to assist Sense in developing supported employment, and one strand of this is for older people. Sainsburys is now considering piloting supported employment in one of their stores and, if it goes well, extending this across the UK.
Joint projects
Up and down the country Sense has a number of joint projects with local authorities, whether communicator guide schemes or joint funded deafblind workers. Match-funding is common where the local authority or a voluntary organisation puts in the same amount of money as Sense.
Steve Alexander says. " One benefit is that with deafblindness being a low incidence disability it's in our interest to get in a project worker over several years, for this provides a platform for developments in services. This has been achieved, notably, in Derby and projects also exist in Sandwell, Walsall and South Gloucestershire."
In Derbyshire, Sense agreed to match-fund money put in by health and social services to fund a deafblind development worker for two years. The project was very much a joint effort with Derbyshire County Council Social Services, Derbyshire City and Southern Derbyshire Health Authority all involved, as well as CamTAD (the campaign for tackling acquired deafness), and disability organisations - Disability Direct, Derbyshire Association for the Blind and Derbyshire Centre for Integrated Living.
Sarah Greaves, the project development worker, says: "It was a very successful partnership and all the different agencies were fully committed. My role was to case study a number of deafblind people over two years and to put in the type of support required by these individuals. In the end it was almost a pilot on a small scale of a country-wide service."
Need was looked at in the context of wider issues, such as differing social circumstances or ethnic background, varying levels of impairment and additional health issues. Says Sarah Greaves, "The project highlighted a clear need for communicator-guide support, workers trained in new forms of communication such as British Sign Language and /or tactile forms of communication, new aids and adaptations such as the loop system or minicom, and the need to support people in their use of hearing aids and low vision aids.
"This is a huge area because many people can't get to their GP, let alone to hospital. Even if they do, the interaction is often so poor that they don't get what they need. Staff say things like' It's the little button over here' to someone who has no sight."
The project also highlighted the isolation experienced by many people with dual sensory loss. To help counter this it set up small peer groups with activities tailored to what people enjoyed and could best access. These included quizzes using smells or object recognition and aromatherapy days.
Many other initiatives grew out of the project including the training of residential care, social services and health authority staff, and a specialised assessment process. This has become more detailed and service users are assessed three times: "It's important to go back because people often don't mention things the first time," says Sarah. Another significant outcome has been that the local authority has agreed to fund a county specialist worker for dual sensory impairment.
London initiative
The gaps highlighted by the Derbyshire project exist elsewhere around the country and awareness is developing of the need to take action. In London two new deafblind development officers have recently been appointed who have been funded by the Bridge House Trust.
Rita Cooper and Anna Pugh, the development officers, are targeting different London boroughs in turn and acting in partnership with social services, statutory bodies and other voluntary organisations to improve services for older deafblind people. They have already been commissioned by Barnet to carry out a research survey, Wandsworth to provide a communicator-guide service, and Westminster to provide workshops for social workers on deafblind awareness and assessments.
Rita sums up the value of working together: "We are not saying that Sense is all powerful and knows or can do everything. We are there to work in partnership with others to get the best quality and range of services for people who are elderly and deafblind."
by Francesca Wolf
With thanks to Steve Alexander, Sarah Greaves and Rita Cooper.
