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Adult social care information and advice are essential and getting them right means that people are more likely to be able to make informed choices and access the right support at the right time and place. This can make a big difference for someone and ultimately can improve their health and wellbeing. It also helps councils to manage and prioritise their assessment processes and resources.
Overview
With councils, sector organisations and Socitm Advisory, Partners in Care and Health (PCH) are working to improve information and advice in adult social care.
This toolkit supports councils to improve their information and advice service, drawing on and promoting existing good practice and innovation. The toolkit is presented in three sections and includes an Information and Advice Maturity Assessment (IAMA) to enable councils to review their current information and advice provision and toolkit resources to then improve their service. We have co-produced this assessment with councils and a range of third sector organisations, incorporating statutory requirements and Think Local Act Personal’s Making It Real statements.
The toolkit is a voluntary self-improvement tool for councils and guidance and resources within the toolkit can be used flexibly to meet individual council needs. Optionally, the toolkit may help councils consider their information and advice service as part of the working with people theme in the CQC assessment framework.
The toolkit, and its contents including the IAMA, have been designed for councils to support operational improvement in information and advice. Some elements will be more relevant for some roles than others – for example, Directors of Adult Social Services may be interested in statutory requirements and strategic management of their information and advice service, while web managers might focus on providing information and advice online.
The toolkit is being continuously reviewed so please email [email protected] or join our community of practice on KHub to share comments and additional content ideas.
- What is information and advice? This section outlines what information and advice for adult social care is and the need to consider a council’s wider information and advice offer, statutory responsibilities of councils with adult social services responsibilities, and Making It Real ‘I’ and ‘We’ statements about information and advice.
- Reviewing your current information and advice service: This section includes the Information and Advice Maturity Assessment (IAMA) tool to assess your current information and advice service. There is guidance on how to complete the tool and an explanation of the ten themes that make up the assessment.
- Tools and resources: This section contains an array of resources to help you to improve your information and advice service. Toolkit resources have been split into the ten themes covered in the IAMA so councils can focus on the areas where they want to improve.