Agencies adopting telecare strategies

A national survey looking at how local authorities have responded to the telecare policy agenda and the government’s Preventative Technology Grant has found that over half now have a local strategy in place.

The survey was led by the Independent project, a consortium of academics, housing and social care providers and industry representatives. It found that found that 53% of health and social care agencies have a local strategy in their area and 37% said there were plans to develop one.

The aim of the survey is to build experience within the consortium to develop a set of technologies to support independent living for cognitively impaired older people. Funding for the survey was provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESRC).

Dr John Woolham, senior research officer at Northampton County Council, who led the survey told E-Health Insider Primary Care: “The survey was an attempt to try to understand the ‘business environment’ better, though obviously we used the opportunity to explore underlying issues: hence the focus on local responses to the PTG.”

Key findings from the report included:

• Local objectives for the use of telecare included support to enable vulnerable people to remain living at home, to prevent admission into care or unplanned hospitalisation, to support optimum timing for hospital discharge, to support carers and to contribute to local falls strategies and accident prevention.
• Most of the respondents intended to prioritise the use of technology on specific groups. The three most frequently mentioned were older people, people with dementia, and people who had fallen or were susceptible to falling.
• Staff who are able to react and respond to activated technology, and training in the use of telecare were deemed to be the most important local factors in getting the best out of telecare locally.
• Factors raised as potential impediments to the development of telecare locally included longer term funding, the need to achieve cultural change and acceptance of the role of technology as well as a number of operational and service development issues.

Dr Woolham said: This suggests that many local authorities have, or are, forming partnerships with other local stakeholders and have or will shortly have, strategies in place.” He said local priorities were being developed in line with the DH’s ‘Building Telecare’ guidance of 2005, and PTG.

The Preventative Technology Grant (PTG) was announced by the Government as an £80m investment in telecare in July 2004. Payments began at the end of April this year.

The purpose of the grant is to initiate a change in the design and delivery of health, social care and housing services and prevention strategies to enhance and maintain the well-being and independence of individuals.

The DH said it expects councils to invest in telecare to help support individuals in the community – it aims to help an additional 160,000 older people to live at home with safety and security and reduce the number of avoidable admissions to residential/nursing care and hospital.

However, Dr Woolham warned that local authorities are not embracing the technology fully and it could be a challenge to see telecare fully adopted in society, despite the new PTG. “Historically, local authorities have not been early adopters of telecare. There may be several reasons for this, including lack of vision from senior managers, concerns it will be used to substitute for social care and about it invading privacy, a preoccupation with performance indicators rather than local service innovation, lack of funds and lack of evidence for effectiveness.”

Her added: “It is also quite likely that it will be challenging to set up local services as the existing knowledge and experience base in most local areas is low.”

“Despite the PTG and PIs, survey responses indicated concern about revenue funding for local telecare services once the grant had been used up, and the existing evidence base for telecare is far from large with few well designed studies – so some caution and hesitancy is perhaps inevitable.”

The postal survey initially covered 679 people, with a response rate of 43%. Stage two then involved contacting people from areas that had identified themselves as having a local telecare strategy in place.

Full details of the study are being compiled and will be published in a peer review journal later this year.