sandr059

Another nerdilicious blogpost. This one is about a central part of the NHS England-led plan ‘Building the right support’ https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ld-nat-imp-plan-oct15.pdf , which is the latest Transforming Care reboot. ‘Building the right support’ makes the welcome point that reducing the number of people going into inpatient services will require much more extensive, earlier, and more useful community support. As part of this, the plan says that there are an estimated 24,000 people ‘at risk of being admitted to hospital without the right support’ (page 36). My understanding is that there is quite a lot of head-scratching around how to identify in practice who these 24,000 people are, and then to work out what services are needed to support them so that they don’t end up in inpatient services. Personally, I’m not convinced about this ‘risky cohort’ idea, and I think it might have some unhelpful unintended consequences. First, the 24,000 figure is extrapol...

[the photo is of Lennox Castle, taken from this website http://www.lennoxcastlestories.co.uk/news which is well worth a browse] Just a quick post, this one. I didn't realise until today (although I should have known) that Scotland has been conducting a census on the number of people in learning disability and mental health inpatient services in Scotland. The most recent one I can find was conducted at the end of October 2014 (I think another one is planned in the spring of 2016?). Most of the information in the reports I could find is not specifically provided for people with learning disabilities (see here for reports from the Census http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/06/7555 ), but some headline figures are... 1) There are 3,909 people in total NHS Scotland learning disability/mental health inpatient services. Of these, 230 are people with learning disabilities, of which 226 are under a learning disability psychiatrist and 181 are in learning disability units. The median lengt...

A quick, genuine question. Can someone please explain to me why ‘social investment’ is such a boon to cash-strapped social care commissioners? Take this ‘case study’, highlighted in the NHS England-led October 2015 reboot of ‘Transforming Care’, ‘Building The Right Support’ (see https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ld-nat-imp-plan-oct15.pdf ). Presumably this means that this is considered to be a ‘good thing’ by NHS England and a model for others to follow. To my naïve mind, this amounts to the following: 1) Bonds in my simplistic view are in effect requests for loans guaranteeing a particular rate of return over a fixed period of time – if you lend us £X, then we guarantee you’ll get £X + £Y% over Z years. If investors, whether social or not, think the risk isn’t too high for the rate of return they’ll get (compared to what is on offer elsewhere) then they’ll go for it. 2)   The money is used to buy or build property – bricks and mortar, that has to be adapted i...