Market Overview

The Care Act 2014 places a statutory duty on the Council to provide care and support for people with assessed eligible needs. The Act also places a duty on the Council to maintain an efficient and effective care market to meet the needs of the residents within the borough.

Nationally there is a drive to focus on prevention, personalisation and outcome focused interventions to support people to remain in their own homes and within Darlington we are committed to supporting people to be as independent as possible by:

• Developing paid work opportunities
• Working from a strength based perspective
• Developing Individual Service Funds
• Preventing and delaying the reliance on residential care by offering community based alternatives
• Supporting people to connect with their communities and have their needs met through social capital
• Making effective use of assistive technology
• A focus on meeting outcomes.

There is a vibrant care and support sector within Darlington, but the successful implementation of the ongoing ambitious transformation programme being implemented across Adult Services will rely on continued innovative joint working with individuals and their families and carers, partners in the public sector, in businesses, in the voluntary sector, and in our communities.

The Council, as a strategic commissioner of services, wishes to forge a new relationship with partners to benefit all who need care and support in Darlington.  By continuing to stimulate and develop a strong local market that is diverse and delivers quality and cost-effective services, people can be offered a real choice of personalised care and support, thereby enhancing individual and community independence.

Coming Soon

Under the Care Act 2014 the council has a statutory duty to provide care and support for people with eligible needs. The Act also places a duty on the council to maintain an efficient and effective care market to meet the needs of the residents in Gateshead. Nationally there is a drive to focus on prevention, personalisation and outcome focused interventions. The growth in choice and control will mean that we need to ensure a diverse market delivering quality and cost-effective services. The provision of enablement services and community based alternatives to residential care that help people to remain within their own home is a government expectation. This, along with increased life expectancies, means people will be going into residential and nursing care later in their lives but with increased complexity of needs. Organisations across all sectors will need to provide personalised care and support at all levels with the ultimate aim of preventing or delaying the need for care home or hospital admissions. The market will need to respond to this demand innovatively with new ideas and ways of working.

Quality of provision

The majority of regulated care provision in Gateshead is CQC rated good or outstanding. For both care homes and community based services, Gateshead provision is higher than the national average, and broadly in line with the NE regional average.

We use a quality assessment framework as part of our contract monitoring and review function, capturing outcomes across the following key themes –

Evidence – Our findings are drawn from a diverse range of evidence including – observations, environment, staff and service user files, engagement with families / carers.

Scoring – We use a RAG rating system to determine the quality of evidence, with the quality of evidence submitted for each element given a score (see table below).

Scores for the 5 outcome themes are added to other scores for observations and consultations evidence to achieve a total score and RAG for the service. These scores and findings then support the development of individual action plans for the providers. We also discuss our findings and concerns with CQC through monthly information sharing sessions.  The latest overview of the quality assessment outcomes can be found in the appendix at tables 9 and 10.

Regular planned and reactive contract monitoring activity and quality assessments take place with providers. Where required actions plans are developed and monitored in partnership with providers. There is a culture of strong partnership working with safeguarding colleagues and other agencies in the system to support the oversight and assurance of care quality, and to call on specialist expertise when required, for example input from medication management teams, tissue viability nurses, district nursing etc.

There is a well-established, incremental Serious Provider Concerns process in place to address any areas of concern that are considered significant enough in nature to suggest continuity of safe and effective care may be compromised.

We are keen to develop our approach to quality assurance and improvement further, including:

• Regular performance reporting through a standardised dashboard that incorporates known risks that may indicate provider or market instability, as well as CQC ratings
• Development of new monitoring tools
• Developing a culture of continuous improvement, including provider forums having a focus on key areas of improvement across the system, such as meds management, pressure damage etc, and opportunities to learn from each other
• Reviewing current capacity for quality assurance and improvement activity, and consideration of additional investment
• Development of regular news bulletins to all providers, incorporating any key updates, highlighted best practise, upcoming events, training opportunities etc.

Please note:- The councils new Care management system MOSAIC went live January 2024 this will support the Digital MPS

This Paragraph was last updated 3rd June 2024

Hartlepool Borough council provides and commissions a range of services to people with eligible social care needs including older people, adults with learning disabilities or physical disabilities, people with mental health needs, adults with substance misuse issues and carers.

Services include information & advice, day services, home care, extra care housing, supported living 24hr residential and nursing careDirect Payments, home equipment and adaptations. Support to carers is a key priority within Hartlepool, as well as assistive technology and a range of other community based services.

Adult Services work with a range of providers and partner organisations to deliver services that meet the needs of the Hartlepool population.

Local authorities have a duty under the Care Act to monitor and manage their local markets. Historically, this has always been achieved through contract management and engagement with providers, clients, families and external agencies. Whilst this continues, the availability of data allows you to review and interpret utilisation (activity), quality, capacity and the location of services across the local area.

This section provides more detail on each of these measures. There are a range of filters to allow users to fully explore what is known about the local area.