Devon County Council working with the NHS to relieve pressure - John Hart

We all remember the news stories last winter about ambulances queueing outside hospitals for hours because our hard-pressed NHS couldn't find beds for their occupants.

Those problems obviously haven't gone away. But I'm pleased that - ahead of next winter's inevitable pressures - we've come to an agreement with our health partners to fund, collectively, a £16 million hospital discharge programme.

The last piece in the jigsaw to ensure this is up and running for the winter was Devon County Council's agreement to spend a further £2 million on the project in addition to money that we and our NHS partners had already contributed from the Better Care Fund.

One of the nationally-funded Better Care Fund's aims was to focus on investing in out-of-hospital services and helping people leave hospital as soon as they are able.

So this money will enable us to continue to provide essential rehabilitation and reablement and help people regain as much independence as possible before they return home following discharge from hospital.

All the evidence tells us that the vast majority of people want to be in their own homes or in their care home if they can as soon as they have finished their treatment in hospital.

We know that the longer people remain in hospital - when they are fit enough to be discharged - the more they lose their confidence and that means it takes longer for them to regain their independence once they do finally leave.

And quite obviously delays in getting people out of hospital as soon as they are ready has an impact on the ability to admit new patients, meaning more ambulance delays and long emergency department waiting times.

Just like us at County Hall, the NHS in Devon has to make every penny it receives in funding go as far as possible. So these sort of multi-agency agreements do require quite a lot of negotiation as it means each of us giving up a little control so that we can provide best value for the public purse.

Our NHS partners across Devon have agreed to work with the county to contain the spending on this programme within the £16 million budget cap. Senior officers will be meeting on a regular basis across all the partners to keep a careful eye on how the money is being used.

And we will be working with our partners in Plymouth and Torbay as we are all well aware that local people use health services that don't necessarily match council boundaries so wider cooperation is needed.

It's well known that there is both a national and local shortage of care workers. After Covid, many people quit the profession.
But there's some good news on that front. Just two years ago we had a shortage of 6,000 hours a week. We have been running a concerted recruitment campaign which has attracted a number of high quality care workers from abroad as well as domestically.

We are also offering a better hourly rate than many other employers and that shortfall is now down to 796 hours a week. To put that in context, we currently commission around 33,000 hours of regulated personal care a week for some 2,500 people across Devon.

There is still work to be done but in recent satisfaction surveys, Devon was rated 15th out of 158 councils for overall satisfaction with our adult care services and fifth out of 158 for quality of life. That's not to suggest we are complacent and we can do better. This new cooperative discharge programme will help us do just that.

Written by John Hart, Leader of Devon County Council