Experiences of integrated care and the integrated care ageing team

Healthwatch Islington was commissioned by Islington Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to carry out engagement and interviews with residents, relatives/carers and staff in local care homes. The aim of the research was to find out about users experiences of the Integrated Care Ageing Team (ICAT) service and how residents (and where appropriate relatives/carers) had been involved in their treatment, and in conversations about their end of life care. Healthwatch Islington (HWI) worked initially with the CCG and ICAT service to identify service users who were eligible to participate in this research. The aim was to visit and interview at a cross-section of care homes across the borough served by the two local hospitals (Whittington Health and University College Hospital).

In all, twenty interviews were conducted that provided information on eleven service users’ experience of the ICAT service. Seven interviews were held with the service user, three with a relative of the service user, and ten interviews were conducted with a member of staff closely associated with the care of the service user. In one care home, the manager provided additional information on their experience of the ICAT service.

It was noted that service users and relatives were not particularly aware of the ICAT service specifically. It may be that the CCG decide that they would like staff to re-iterate this more frequently to service users and relatives. Though from this piece of work it did not seem that this was important to residents and relatives. Similarly, from HWI’s wider work, patients and carers are more interested in how they are being treated than in which part of the NHS is treating them. Integration seems to be working with the service. Service users who could remember, and relatives, generally reported that the service had known who they were and that the service user’s story had not needed to be repeated. Nursing home staff also noted that the ICAT service had enabled them to provide a better service to the users. It was difficult for users, relatives and sometimes nursing home staff to attribute specific developments to treatment by the ICAT service in particular, though where it was possible, comments were generally positive.