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The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence and nature of integrated care in community hospitals.

Staff reported their views and experiences of integrated care in 48 questionnaires for a Community Hospitals Association programme. An analytical framework was developed based on eight types of integration, and the community hospital services concerned were grouped into nine service categories.

Staff reported multiple types of integration, averaging four types (median), with a range of two to eight (of the eight types studied). The types of integration most frequently reported were multidisciplinary care, and community hospital/secondary care and community hospital/primary care. Integration with communities, patients and the third sector featured in many of the services. Integration with social care and local authorities were least frequently reported. Services with the highest number of types of integration (5+) included palliative care, maternity services and health promotion. Staff reported that commitment was a positive factor whilst a lack of staff resources hindered partnership working.

Staff volunteered to be part of the programme which promoted good practice, and although the findings from the study cannot be generalised, they do contribute knowledge on key partnerships in local hospitals. Further research on the types, levels and outcomes of integrated care in a larger sample of community hospitals would build on this study and enable further exploration of partnership working.

The analytical framework developed for the study is being applied by staff and community groups as a tool to help assess appropriate partnership working and help identify the scope for further developing integrated care. The evidence of integrated working is available to inform those commissioning and providing community health services.

This study has shown that integrated working is present in community hospitals. This research provides new knowledge on the types of integrated care present in a range of community hospital services. The study shows a tradition of joint working, the presence of multiple simultaneous types of integration and demonstrated that integrated care can be provided in a range of services to patients of all ages in local communities.

Recently arrived older refugees in resettlement countries are a particularly vulnerable population who face many risks to their health and well‐being, and many challenges in accessing services. This paper reports on a project undertaken in Victoria, Australia to explore the needs of older people from 14 recently arrived refugee communities, and the barriers to their receiving health and aged care. Findings from consultations with community workers and service providers highlight the key issues of isolation, family conflict and mental illness affecting older refugees, and point to ways in which policy‐makers and service providers can better respond to these small but deserving communities.

Connected Care, Turning Point's model for involving the community in the design and delivery of integrated health and well‐being services, aims to involve the community in the commissioning process in a way which fundamentally shifts the balance of power in favour of local people. The model has been tested in a number of areas across the country, and previous articles in the Journal of Integrated Care have charted the progress of the original pilot in Hartlepool. Cost‐benefits of the approach are now becoming clearer. Implementation of a new community‐led social enterprise in Hartlepool began in 2007, and today its Connected Care service provides community outreach, information, access to a range of health and social care services, advocacy, co‐ordination and low‐level support to the people of Owton. Key lessons, from Hartlepool and elsewhere, have centred on the value of making the case for service redesign from the ‘bottom up’ and building the capacity of the community to play a role in service delivery, while also promoting strong leadership within commissioning organisations to build ‘top‐down’ support for the implementation of outcomes defined through intensive community engagement. The new Government's ‘localism’ agenda creates new opportunities for community‐led integration, and the Connected Care pilots provide a number of learning points about how this agenda might be successfully progressed.

Purpose: The aim is to explore how family relations are affected by societal changes in relation to informal and formal caregiving and self-determination of older adults.

Design/methodology/approach: Care managers (CMs)/social workers (SWs) (N = 124) participated in a comparative vignette study including Japan, South Korea, and Sweden. Systems theory was used.

Findings: Japanese CMs/SWs clearly describe their efforts to create networks in a relational way between formal and informal actors in the community. South Korean CMs/SWs balance between suggesting interventions to support daily life at home or a move to a nursing home, often acknowledging the family as the main caregiver. In Sweden, CMs/SWs highlight the juridical element in meeting the older adult and the interventions offered, and families primarily give social support. Regarding self-determination, the Japanese priority is for CMs/SWs to harmonize within the family and the community. South Korean CMs/SWs express ambivalent attitudes to older adults’ capability for self-determination in the intersection between formal and family care. Swedish CMs/SWs adhere to the older adult’s self-determination, while acknowledging the role of the family in persuading the older adult to accept interventions. The results suggest emerging defamilialization in South Korea, while tendencies to refamilialization are noticed in Japan and Sweden, albeit in different ways.

Research limitations/implications: In translation, nuances may be lost. A focus on changing families shows that country-specific details in care services have been reduced. For future research, perspectives of “care” need to be studied on different levels.

Originality/value: Using one vignette in three countries with different welfare regimes, discussing changing views on families’, communities’ and societal caregiving is unique. This captures changes in policy, influencing re- and defamilialization.

This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of Taiwan’s community-based long-term care service stations.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight managers selected from stations located in the counties with the highest proportion of elderly people.

The results are as follows: the main services offered by the stations include health promotion activities, congregate meal programs, respite care and making house calls; government subsidies constitute a major proportion of the service stations’ funds, followed by user payments and external donations; the adversities encountered include frequent policy revisions, the dwellers’ reluctance to participate in the activities, manpower shortages and subpar service quality; and the effects of the stations on the community include achieving aging in place, providing more options for life after retirement, mitigating caregivers’ burden, expanding the elderly’s social networks and strengthening their health literacy.

The results of this research can understand the benefits and difficulties of Tier C service centers in Taiwan. Also, the practical experiences provide some suggestions for policies and training. Future studies can focus on establishing systematized training programs and standardizing the service personnel’s competence.

The United Kingdom as it approaches the millennium is frequently described as both an ‘information society’ and an ‘ageing society’. This paper outlines the findings of a piece of research exploring the relationship between older people and information, with particular references to the National Health Service and Community Care Act, 1990. The research findings suggest that urgent action is required if older people are fully to participate in and benefit from the information society.

There has been much research focusing on contracting and its effect on individual voluntary sector organisation, and some mapping of the extent of voluntary sector participation in joint community care planning. Each of these is a new and formal relationship with the statutory sector, and in many cases the tasks are fulfilled by the same voluntary sector worker (usually the senior paid officer of the agency). But the impact that these two new relationships have on the voluntary organisation’s perception of its dependence and inter‐dependence has received less attention. The paper will draw on structured interviews in three local authorities, with voluntary sector participants in contracts for social care, and with participants in joint community care planning groups, as well as on documentary research. It will explore the impact of the evolving roles for those seeking to operate effectively in the pluralist provision of public services. It will analyse experiences within joint community care planning structures, and will analyse experiences of contractual relationships. The paper will seek to identify the elements present in each research site which influence the culture of joint working within the two statutory/ voluntary relationships.

Care management has developed in a variety of forms. This diary study explores differences in the approach taken to care management in three distinct social service settings: community‐based older people's teams, hospital social work teams also for older people and community‐based teams for adults with mental health problems. Conclusions are drawn both for social care and for health services developing case management for people with long‐term conditions.

Many social services departments have successfully developed services which meet older people's physical survival needs so that they can continue living in their own homes despite serious disabilities. An emerging priority is to support the morale and quality of life of the same individuals.Assisted by the Social Policy Research Unit (SPRU), a team of social services managers conducted a programme of interviews designed to obtain the views of very old, frail home care clients about their services and their lives in general. A few interviewees expressed very low morale and this seemed to reduce substantially their ratings of satisfaction with the help they received. While it is well established that disability and isolation are linked to depression in older people, it is rare that service providers systematically address these problems. Some practical strategies for this purpose are proposed as a result of this survey.

This article focuses on the development and current situation of services for people with learning disabilities in England. Deinstitutionalisation started in the 1960s, when a series of scandals in hospitals were brought to public attention. In response, the 1971 government White Paper Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped was published, and the first community‐based services were introduced. Further policy papers attempted to modernise social services in the following period. The 2001 White paper Valuing People is the most recent policy framework specific to people with intellectual disabilities. It identifies rights, independence, choice and inclusion as the four leading principles for services and support, and will be of primary importance for future development. However, at present implementation is in the very early stages. Not least, the intense implementation of market mechanisms by the Thatcher Government in the 1980s and 1990s has led to a situation that is hard to grasp, the organisation of care and support varying from authority to authority.