Review of respite services
Overview
Respite care is an essential part of the overall support for unpaid carers and those with care needs, helping to sustain the caring relationship, enabling carers to have a life alongside the caring role, promoting health and wellbeing and preventing crises.
Moray Council directly commissions a number of services that can be used to provide accommodated respite support for adults with care needs and carers. As Adult Social Services is changing with the introduction of Self Directed Support we need to review our approach to commissioning respite support and look at the services we currently commission, as well as the wider market. To enable us to do this, we need to understand how people's experiences of respite and how services could be improved or changed to better meet their needs.
We sent out paper copies of a questionnaire to carers and a separate one to people who go to accommodated respite services.
We also held six focus group meetings.
The consultation ran from 5th February to 3rd March 2014.
Feedback
We asked:
We wanted to know which accommodated respite service people had used, what sort of activities they took part in and what else they would like to see being provided. We asked who people would like to be with during their time at respite, what made it perfect for them and what needs to change.
We asked carers about their role and the difference respite makes to their lives, if it was meeting their needs and what would make it better.
You said:
Respite is a valued service with many service users and carers expressing high levels of satisfaction with the current service.
Service users welcomed the quality of care they received, the variety of activities provided and the opportunities for social interaction with friendly staff and fellow residents. Some, however, preferred to be at home.
Views were mixed on how future respite should be provided. More than half wanted to be with people their own age, 64% wanted to be with people who have similar needs and disabilities but conversely 57% said they would prefer somewhere that allows them to mix with people of all ages and disabilities.
The primary concern of carers was that respite must be a positive experience for the person they care for, with all social and care needs being met by caring and professional staff. For carers, respite needs to be available at the right time and in the right place. Issues were raised around allocation of respite, how flexible it was, communication and difficulties around funding and transport.
We did:
We will use the results of the consultation to assist us in our approach to commissioning accommodated respite support and will use the feedback to create the type of services people in Moray have said would best meet their needs.
Further focus group meetings are now being planned to discuss the next stage of the respite review and letters will be sent to carers and people who use respite services to invite them to attend.