Telecare Aware has moved – see below

Ok, this does not have any new information for our readers, but we thought it was a good example of a brief, positive press release.

At last we have finished wading through the 236 pages of the White Paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services to sniff out the implications for telecare and telehealth in England. Our main conclusion is that the White Paper is disappointing because of the lack of a coherent, fundamental vision of social services, health services, housing and other service providers working together to produce radical, preventive services. It does contain good news for people interested in the telecare and telehealth agenda — but it is hard to find.

Follow this link to download our 7 page briefing paper.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Social Exclusion Unit report Inclusion Through Innovation (January 2006) highlights how technology can be used to tackle health problems by supporting front line health professionals, providing people with access to information and support, and helping people to maintain their independence.

Link to SEU website.

Suffolk County Council, which has won government plaudits for the quality of its Supporting People service, has shocked providers by withdrawing funding for emergency alarm systems in older peoples’ homes. It has warned housing associations that it will stop paying for community alarms from April this year.

A spokesperson for the ODPM said it was not for the department to directly intervene ‘where decisions on local priorities have been taken by commissioning bodies…However, the ODPM will clearly be concerned where decisions such as this have implications for many vulnerable people who have received a community alarm service for many years and may not have the resources to pay for the service themselves.’ Suffolk was only facing a 2 per cent cut, he added.

Inside Housing report.

The intention is to open up new sectors in the telecare market. Brief report tells you hardly any more than this.

The DH press release on the Health and Social Care Information Centre monitoring figures for the performance indicator on older people receiving intensive care at home conflated it, somewhat misleadingly, with a reminder about the Preventative Technology Grant. This story in the Society Guardian builds on the press release, to comment on telecare in Newham and West Lothian.

Read the story

Three examples of the kind of publicity you want – and one of the kind you don’t.

Kent

Halton

Wandsworth

Richmond

On Friday 6th January the Government confirmed how much money councils are to receive over the next two years as part of the Preventative Technology Grant. At the same time the Health and Social Care Information Centre published figures that show the past three years have seen a steady increase in the proportion of older people receiving intensive help to maintain a high quality of life independently at home rather than in residential care, with nearly one third (32%) now in this group. Read more and see both documents showing the figures in more depth.