Minister announces new telecare guidance on way

The government is to issue new guidance for social care commissioners to help make telecare more mainstream, it was revealed today.

Speaking at the Laing and Buisson Telecare and Assistive Technology conference in London, the parliamentary under secretary for care services, Ivan Lewis, announced that new guidance on telecare was to be issues to commissioners within the next two months.

Lewis told E-Health Insider Primary Care that the guidance would help commissioners work together to consider future developments in social care.

Lewis said: “We have a moral obligation to look at the quality of care available for older people, and that isn’t just the state’s responsibility. There has to be more advice and protection made available to anyone who wants independent life, and we need to be able to clearly define what social care is. That is why we are releasing new social care guidance."

He added: “Assistive technology and telecare have a great role to play, and government grants such as the Preventative Technology Grant have triggered innovation and change, but more needs to be done for everyone to recognise these advances as mainstream.”

Emphasising the government’s commitment to the development of demonstration projects of telecare, Lewis said that a number of sites were now showing the relationships that were possible between the NHS and local authorities to take telecare mainstream.

“A number of our demonstration sites have shown the benefits of telecare. At Durham, the county council are looking at mainstreaming telecare across the county, and Kent are looking at evaluating it for council-wide rollout as well."

He added that Norfolk also have plans to scale up their use of telecare: "Norfolk have been so impressed that they are aiming to increase telecare usage by 2008 from a few hundred to more than 4000 new patients and have created a new role of Assistive Technology support officer.”

The minister told the audience that the government recognises that as the ageing population grows larger, more people want choice and do not want to be in care homes. He said the government agreed with the Local Government Association’s December recommendations that more money should be spent on preventative measures.

Lewis said telecare is about quality of life for individuals. “Someone once said to me, minister, I don’t want a service, I want a life. I very much agree with that sentiment, we should be able to offer people a quality of life and citizenship. Social care needs to have a much higher status. Commissioning is at the heart of it moving towards the future," said the minister.

“Social care was identified as a great challenge in the Chancellor’s pre-budget report. We have to redefine what we view as a fair settlement between the state, individual and family. There is money in the system for telecare, but in the long term that’s not enough. We need to evaluate the role of assistive technology to support people’s quality of life and make telecare more mainstream, offering individuals choice.”

Overall, the minister said he wanted to see more councils taking advantage of the technology and mainstreaming it so that the elderly and people with long term conditions can choose if they want to pay for the benefits themselves.

“There is lots of innovation out there, but the trick is to get senior managers, providers, and commissioners to look at assistive technology from the beginning as a mainstream approach, and not worry about its potential costs. No-one knows the complete potential benefits, but as technology changes rapidly, the change is equally relevant for the care sector.

“The elderly, people with long term conditions and people with learning disabilities can really benefit from this. We can’t be left behind, we need to use telecare and assistive technology in a radical way and monitor its progress over the years. Not everyone will want individual budgets, but those who do should be given proper information and advice in order to get more independence for themselves and their families.”

He added that the current system was based on post war usage and more needs to be done to ensure that social care continues to develop into a modern system, designed to maximise quality of life.