iNetwork Award Winners - Partnership Excellence
We are very pleased to announce that we won an iNetwork award for Partnership Excellence.
This award recognises outstanding performance from their partner organisations. The award celebrates innovation, collaboration, efficiency and going the extra mile in partnership working. The award was presented by Delphine Fitouri, Bradford District Care NHS FT.
This project is a council-led collaboration to co-design an automated digital solution to generate an Independent Personal Budget (IPB) and associated self-service digital care cap account, to track spend towards the £86,000 cap. This is all related to the Adult Social Care charging reforms which, since November 2022, have been delayed for 2 years.
The IPB collaboration and project has been brought together by CC2i; the solution has been developed and delivered by the technical partner Looking Local; and the co-funding councils are Kirklees Council, Walsall Council, Halton Borough Council and Lincolnshire County Council.
Alongside the four co-funding councils, there is an additional Gallery of local authorities engaged and overseeing the collaboration and resulting solution. Over 50 local authorities – many of which are iNetwork members – have actively joined the project as Gallery members. This means that with the core partners and the gallery, over a third of all English Adult Social Care responsible councils are working on this project. This number shows real value and council collaboration, the likes of which is rare – nearly impossible – to find.
The charging reform delay has meant that the need for visibility as an individual approaches their cap is no longer immediately needed. Despite this, the discovery phase identified other challenges which exist currently and remain relevant without the reforms landing – such as a budget calculator, provisional planning of care and fluctuation in user’s care needs. The agile nature of this partnership has meant that it has been able to keep pace with the changing policy landscape – anticipating and focusing on the most relevant elements, meaning that it will still result in a platform that addresses these existing challenges, outside of the reforms (as well as being ready for the reforms when they are confirmed).
Whilst the announcement of delays has simplified the short-term picture, this process of collaborative exploration and product development has shone a spotlight on various stresses and deficiencies within the systems and processes used to support current case loads. There is scope for us to both meet these short term challenges (with innovation supported by technology) and to lay the foundation for whatever reforms come down the road in the medium term.
We are so pleased that this wide-spanning collaboration has been recognised for the Partnership Excellence award.
