Adult social care information and advice toolkit: Theme 4. Understanding your communities

Overview

This theme is designed to help councils understand more about their whole population rather than just the people who contact ASC for information and advice or care and support.

Different groups within your population will have specific information and advice needs, whether in terms of subject matter/content or format and presentation. Some of these groups are easier to identify (and easier to reach) than others: we have developed an approach to working with national datasets to identify them more clearly at a local level, available within our community of practice.

Having identified the groups in your local population who may need information and advice, the task is then to consider:

• What specific information and advice people in the group may need
• The routes through which they would access it most easily
• The everyday language they use to talk about their needs and wishes.

We will continue to develop resources for this theme covering the above considerations.

Existing resources to help councils

• Sources of demographic and other data: Census 2021; DWP StatXplore
• Personas
• Resources for/about people who share protected characteristics, eg SCIE content about older LGBTQ+ people
• ADASS Supporting Carers Hub – resources for councils and other organisations working to support unpaid carers
• The RNID offers information and guidance for health and social care professionals on how to make your services more accessible and how to meet your legal requirements.
• See People’s experience of getting information and advice for resources about the language to use when communicating with different groups of residents.

Existing resources for specific groups in the community

Resources from key national organisations representing different groups:

• Age UK
• Centre for Ageing Better
• Elderly Accommodation Counsel / housingcare.org
• Alzheimer’s Society
• Dementia Voices – guidelines on language about dementia/writing dementia-friendly information
• Parkinson’s UK
• Scope – Equality for disabled people.
• Sense – for people with complex disabilities
• RNIB – helping blind and partially sighted people
• RNID – supporting people who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. The RNID also provides a useful index of services/support for people who are deaf/have hearing loss or tinnitus and belong to other under-represented groups.

All the above organisations provide their own information and advice for and/or about the people they represent. Note, however, that CASSG states “Referral or signposting to national sources should only occur where this is deemed to be in the best interests of the person and their circumstances and should not take the place of local services necessary for local authorities to discharge their duty under the Act. Local authorities will need to find the appropriate balance between local and national provision to cost-effectively meet their local need.” (Para 3.69)

Resources for unpaid carers used by several councils:

• Carers Trust – including find carer services near you, resources for young carers/young adult carers and advice for carers on money and benefits
• Bridgit providing support to unpaid carers, councils and carer charities
• Mobilise providing online support for unpaid carers
• Resources for disabled people, eg Medequip, Living Made Easy, AskSARA, Manage@Home
• Mental Health Accessible is an accreditation scheme for financial services, utilities companies and other essential services, which recognises high standards in the way these businesses work with customers with mental health needs.

Points to consider 

• What are the highest priority groups in your area (in terms of demographics, disabilities and needs) to collate/develop specific information and advice for?