Consultation on an SDS Strategy for Highlands

Research
1

NHS Highland and the Highland Council have come together with local stakeholders to develop a draft Self-directed Support Strategy for the Highlands.

This is an opportunity to influence the content of the overall Strategy, as well as being involved in the implementation of that Strategy in practise.

Self-directed Support is about giving people the choice, control and flexibility over the support and resources that they need to ensure that they can live an ordinary life.

With this in mind, NHS Highland and the Highland Council, supported by local and national partners, are keen to set out a new approach to providing SDS. They want to hear from anyone with an interest in the development and implementation of SDS locally.

Their vision is for services to be caring, enabling, promoting of equality and person centered, meaning that peoples’s support is planned around their individual needs and what is important to them.

The consultation sets out a suggested new vision and approach to providing SDS in Highlands and will take place in a range of different ways, including:

  • An online survey
  • Online Focus Group discussions

There are a number of different ways that you can get involved and share your views, including:

There will also be a range of online Focus Group discussions, for:

  • People using social care services
  • Carers
  • Provider organisations
  • Social Work staff
  • Personal Assistants
  • People with mental health needs
  • People with learning difficulties
  • People receiving direct payments and employing their own PAs

If you would like any more information, or a paper copy of the survey, or would like someone to call you back to discuss the consultation you can contact Karen at NHS Highland via email: karen.patience@nhs.scot or call and leave a message on (01463) 704715

The consultation lasts from Monday 5 July until the end of August 2021.

If you’d like to be discuss any aspect of the Consultation process, or to arrange a Focus Group for a particular group of people you know, just get in touch and we can discuss things further.

My contact details are:

Mark Han-Johnston (Membership Development Executive)

Tel: 07775 065653

Email: mark@sdsscotland.org.uk

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I am interested to see if anyone can point me to the outcome of this strategy study?

3

Hi Beth,
Thank you for the post.
As an update, there is now a published ‘Highland SDS Strategy’ which you can see online here:
Highland SDS Strategy: making the change together

The Strategy is a ‘live’ document, so it is the plan that helps focus the work that people are involved in across Highlands around SDS. The plan has the suppport of both Highland Council and NHS Highland.

There is a range of work being undertaken at the moment around:

  • The Personal Assistant workforce - to support people to consider being a PA as a positive employment opportunity. There have been some online and in person events to support this.
  • Developing Option 2 - to look at what is needed to make Option 2 a viable choice for people across Highland.
  • Personal Assistant pay rates - the hourly rates were increased recently to recognise the increased costs in recruiting and retaining PAs across the Highlands.

If you wanted a further update on current developments, or if there were ideas you might have to improve SDS in Highlands, I could connect you with some people involved in the development of the Strategy.

I hope that’s helpful but do come back to me if there’s anything else that I can do.

Many thanks,

Mark
@amy.scobbie@nhs.scot
@IanThompson
@Becs