Central and local government need to take action to promote the scaling up of technology solutions in social care to deal with the crisis in the sector, according to a new policy paper.
Published by public services thinktank Reform, it highlights problems in adopting innovations and recommends measures to encourage quicker take-up in advance of the publication of the Casey Commission report on the future of social care, expected in 2028.
Titled ‘Innovating for independence: a win-win for health and social care’, the paper is based on interviews with people working across the sector, including in the NHS and councils, and addresses the system-wide benefits that technology is already having. These include cost savings, enabling vulnerable people to retain their independence, helping to build the system-wide capacity and saving social care staff from burn-out.
It points out that too much of the technology in social care is not being scaled and is stuck in small scale pilots that are not having the system-wide impact they could achieve.
Barriers
This is partly because they are developed by individual local authorities for their own purposes and rarely deployed as a cross-system asset, and there is limited sharing of best practice between authorities.
In addition, there is often a tension between devoting time and money to long term improvements and needing to deal with short term issues, even though this should be a false dichotomy when developing technology, the paper says.
The funding model does not always work well for local government, with money often coming from small pots with not enough to cover the costs of initial adoption of a technology, and councils may struggle to directly quantify the benefits from an innovative solution.
In addition, the social care workforce is ageing and digital literacy is not as strong as needed, and there is a culture that is averse to change.
But the paper says there is scope to overcome the barriers and highlights several ‘quick win’ actions that should be taken by central and local government in advance of the Casey Commission.
They include:
- An umbrella organisation should hold a repository of evidence on technologies in adult social care and distribute bi-yearly summaries to local authorities and integrated care boards.
- Guidance on the role and use of data in technologies should be co-produced by practitioners, commissioners, the technology industry, charities and academic organisations.
- Central government should establish a more substantial grant fund for the adoption of technology, building on the Accelerating Reform Fund.
- A simplified procurement process for new technologies should accompany the new fund.
- Local authorities and NHS trusts should collaborate in the procurement process through the use of joint bids, ensuring both the costs and benefits are shared.
- Local authorities should support their workforce to improve their digital skills and enhance their capabilities, allocating appropriate time to training.
- Leaders and senior employees should demonstrate enthusiasm and desire to use technological innovations and enhance their own and their workforce’s digital skills capabilities.
Rosie Beacon, head of health at Reform, said: “This paper underlines the fact that smart deployment of technology at scale is crucial to ensuring that system-wide benefits can be achieved. That means overcoming barriers to change, through coordinated action by central and local government and social care providers.
“Achieving a more rapid uptake of the existing technologies means greater independence and more personalised care for individuals, and greater capacity in both social care and the NHS to care for people. A double dividend.”
The paper also highlights a number of innovations in the sector, including the PainChek app for managing the pain of individuals, Lilli non-intrusive monitoring technology and the Visionable platform for sharing care plans.
