Mears Care group joins with Local Government Information Unit to boost prevention and early intervention in new project

Home care provider Mears Care Ltd group has joined forces with the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) to analyse how local authorities spend money on preventative measures for adult social care services.

The idea that forestalling an issue before it arises leads to a better social outcome, and is also a cheaper option than dealing with the outcomes after a problem has occurred has been agreed by both the private, voluntary and public sector.

The project will unite the organisations and together they will tackle the lack of clarity around what constitutes prevention, and how much money is spent on it overall.

Mears Care will be representing the private sector, which provides home care services to over 20,000 older people throughout the UK.

Abigail Lock, head of communications at Mears Group said: “Established wisdom tells us that prevention is better than cure; however, ensuring that spending is targeted on effective measures can be challenging.

"As a leading provider of domiciliary care, Mears is particularly interested in measures that can delay deterioration and reduce dependency. We think that providers should be incentivised to take a preventative approach and encourage independence.

"This is why we are working with Camden Council, The British Red Cross and LGIU to develop a tool kit to support local authorities with this important agenda.”

“As a leading provider of domiciliary care, Mears is particularly interested in 'downstream measures' which can delay deterioration and reduce dependency.

“However, in many cases current practice in social care means that when people enter the care system there is often one direction of travel – increased dependency and deterioration. The fact that providers are usually paid on a task and time basis means that prevention is not incentivised – in fact, perversely service user deterioration means increased business.

“Mears believe that it doesn’t have to be like this. We think that providers should be incentivised to take a preventative approach, slow deterioration and encourage independence. This is why we are working with Camden Council, The British Red Cross and LGIU to develop a tool kit to support local authorities with this important agenda.”

The project will be exploring how much money is being spent on preventative, rather than responsive interactions in adult social care in the London borough of Camden, and then using the findings to enable other councils to increase the effectiveness of their preventative services.

A spokesperson from the London Borough of Camden said: "Camden already values and promotes investment in preventative services, for example in adult social care and children’s services, and the Council is keen to better understand how services across the organisation contribute to our goals in this way.

"As part of our organisational change programme we have already begun work in relation to outcome-based budgeting and better use of data, with a strong emphasis on working across organisational silos. This exciting project can help us to develop our thinking in these important areas while developing a common understanding of prevention and its benefits for the Council."

The project has been created to combat the problem experienced by policy makers around what services to invest prevention funding in, and how to move funds away from acute services, where increasing demand is placing pressure on budgets.

By analysing the London Borough of Camden’s spend against a chosen outcome of adult social care, the project aims to find out how much is spent on early action as opposed to response and use the information to create guidance which can be offered to other councils analysing their spend.

Also taking part in the project will be the British Red Cross and Joe Farrington-Douglas, head of UK Public Policy commented: "We have a track record of working in partnership with the NHS and local authority in Camden to help people recover from illness and maintain their wellbeing at home.

"We are excited to support this project to understand how Camden is investing for the future – and to see how other Councils could learn from their experience and achieve the transformation of care and support that we need."

If you are interested in hearing more about this project, or in piloting the guidance later in the year, contact Lauren Lucas at lauren.lucas@lgiu.org.uk.