Carers experiences of Connecting Care

Healthwatch Wakefield supported Niche Health and Social Care Consulting in conducting an independent evaluation of carers' experiences of Connecting Care (formerly known as Care Closer to Home) commissioned by Wakefield MBC Public Health. 53 carers were interviewed between July 2015 and April 2016 to explore areas such as the support received by the carer, the impact of the caring role on the carers own physical and mental health, the access to services provided and what they felt could improve their experience.

Connecting Care is an integrated team set up with aim of helping and supporting carers to enable them to care for longer. These Connecting Care Teams are made up of community matrons, physiotherapists, occuptaitonal therapists, social care staff, Age UK workers, Carers Wakefield workers and pharmacists.

Due to the lack of a shared patient/service user record, carers’ contact details might only be known to one of the services involved. In some cases, carers’ details were not recorded at all. Healthwatch Wakefield were able to draw on their ongoing review of service users which provided the majority of the carers who consented to take part in the project.

Healthwatch Wakefield understanding is that the Connecting Care service has been designed, for the most part, to offer intensive and rapid support and interventions, and to set things up so everyone is supported - the focus being on rehabilitation and crisis intervention. However, for many of the interviewees the likely future is one of worsening health and decline. Elderly people will become older and frailer, and people with conditions such as dementia and terminal disease face a clear future of declining health. For some carers, looking after people such as these, there also seemed to be an absence of planning for the inevitable declining future of service users which left some them (the carer) struggling and frustrated.

The impact all of the above is likely to be that carers are more likely to struggle on until their own health is further damaged or to phone 999 for help and end up with their loved one as an inpatient. Unnecessary hospital admissions are one of the things that Connecting Care is seeking to reduce and therefore developing an approach for agreeing a plan with carers which is explicit about what to do if things deteriorate (for them or the service user) would seem to be a useful way forward. In addition, making short and longer term plans and expectations clear to carers would be helpful as some struggled to understand why some services were not available to them or were only available for certain periods of time.