How Leeds City Council’s Community Health and Well-being Service is making lives better

In this article, we hear from Cath Roff MBE, Project Director: Social Care Transformation at Leeds City Council, on the launch of the ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ and their upcoming Community Health and Well-being Service.

The ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ sets out a path for the adult social care sector to address its current and future challenges by ensuring we have a sustainable, skilled and motivated workforce.

One of the central focuses of the Strategy is the impact that pay, flexibility and working conditions have on recruitment and retention efforts for social care organisations, as these factors are amongst the most significant when it comes to how likely people are to accept and remain in employment.

The upcoming launch of Leeds City Council’s Community Health and Well-being Service was highlighted within the Strategy as representing an important shift in how care services can operate to the benefit of their staff and those being supported. I wanted to take the time to focus on the service and provide some insight into how it will work.

In September 2024, Leeds goes live with its Community Health and Well-being Service (CHWS). This is jointly commissioned by Leeds City Council and Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust. It is a transformational approach to delivering health and care services at home, through a collaborative partnership of its contracted providers, Be Caring and Springfield, working together on a neighbourhood basis. It aims to create a paradigm shift away from the traditional “time and task” model of home care.

One of the key aims of the service is to reduce the turnover rate of care workers in home care services as we know that continuity of care worker is highly valued by service users. The CHWS aims to do this by improving terms and conditions of service and by making the job more rewarding. By contracting on a neighbourhood basis, the service aims to recruit local people who reflect the community they serve and create more walking rounds.

Care workers will be paid the Real Living Wage and will be paid for their whole shift. Any downtime in their rota is to be used for the benefit of the citizen. This may involve popping back to see someone who seemed a bit poorly that morning, ringing a trusted trader to help a service user get their leaky radiator fixed, popping into their local Neighbourhood Network to find out what activities they put on, attending a multi-disciplinary meeting at the local GPs over a complex case or undertaking some bite-sized training.

The knowledge and understanding of the people care workers support is valued and trusted, allowing them to fulfil a “trusted assessor” function by the dynamic right-sizing of care packages, with the agreement of the individual. If the adjustment of hours is successful, then the care package is referred to social work for a light touch review and sign off.

The service places a strong emphasis on promoting people’s independence and well-being, supporting people to recover the confidence and ability to do some things for themselves. Care workers will be trained in enabling approaches but also to spot the early signs of deterioration. They will be trained to undertake delegated healthcare activities.

Care workers are also encouraged to develop links with local community organisations and to help people reconnect with family, friends and their community. They may flex care hours upwards in the short term to support people to access, for example, their local lunch club until the individual has the confidence to go by themselves.

The Community Health and Well-being Service will also look to review and revise the job description, roles and responsibilities for care workers in light of the learning from the project. In terms of career progression, the service is looking at the Enhanced Care Worker role and also the level 3 Apprenticeship in Community Health and Well-being as potential opportunities.

We know that respecting the knowledge care workers have of the people they support and stepping away from “time and task” to have greater flexibility in how they support people, results in care workers staying longer in their role.

An earlier smaller pilot in 2020 achieved a retention rate of 96% with a waiting list of staff who wanted to work on the pilot. One staff member commented that they felt “like the chains had been removed, and coming to work was no longer just a job”.

An independent evaluation by Leeds Beckett University stated:

We’re hopeful that the launch of this service will encourage other organisations to embrace the recommendations within the Workforce Strategy by highlighting the positive outcomes achieved by those that prioritise flexible and rewarding working conditions for care staff.

Skills for Care is shining our spotlight on the Workforce Strategy with our ‘Driving change in social care campaign’. Find out more on our website.

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