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Covering Letter

Primary and Community Care Directorate
Partnership Improvement and Outcomes Division

T: 0131-244 3748 F: 0131-244 5307
E: isla.bisset@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

To: Chief Executives Local Authorities & NHS Boards
Directors of Housing
Local Authority Directors of Finance
Directors of Social Work
Other Professional and Voluntary Organisations

2 December 2008

Dear Colleagues

EQUIPMENT AND ADAPTATIONS GUIDANCE FOR HEALTH AND LOCAL AUTHORITY PARTNERSHIPS - CONSULTATION ON DRAFT GUIDANCE

I am writing to invite your comments on the Equipment and Adaptations Guidance for Health and Local Authority Partnerships in the attached compendium. The guidance sets out responsibilities for the joint provision of equipment and adaptations. It replaces previous guidance issued in October 1976. Your views are invited by 31 March 2009.

Context

Equipment and adaptations are an important part of an integrated community care service. They can enable some of our most vulnerable citizens to achieve their individual outcomes, living in their own home for as long as possible, enabling them to achieve the quality of life they wish as well as being a cost effective model of intervention.

The new equipment and adaptations guidance aims to update and clarify existing guidance, taking into account legislative and policy changes in care provision since previous guidance was issued in 1976 (Circular 1976 ( GEN) 90).

The guidance aims to enable professionals, users and carers to better understand local health and social care partnerships responsibilities, and to create a more consistent approach to the provision of equipment and adaptations across Scotland.

This new guidance recognises that there are still key areas requiring further development in relation to access to equipment and adaptations, support will be provided to take this work forward.

There are anumber of key recommendations in this document:

Scottish Government recommendations:

The Scottish Government will:

1. Develop a national website to provide a useful resource for users and carers to access information on equipment and adaptations.

2. Produce a good practice guide for equipment provision that will allow partnerships to benchmark services against.

3. Commence work to establish a good practice model for provision of major adaptations.

4. Develop a guide for practitioners, service users, and carers through the different funding streams available for housing adaptations.

5. Support shared learning from early implementers of effective occupational therapy approaches between health and across local authority staff; and provide support for further implementation.

Local partnership recommendations:

1. Local partnerships should incorporate equipment and adaptations into mainstream community care services by:

• Taking an outcomes based approach to involvement of users and carers during the assessment process
• Incorporate equipment and adaptations into the assessment, care plan and review process in line with the National Minimum Information Standards;
• Offer a carers assessment to anyone who cares for a disabled person or elderly relative
• Ensure training for staff reflects the above approach.

2. Partnerships should jointly produce and publish information on equipment and adaptations provision.

3. Partnerships should adopt a 'standard' and specialist/major model to the provision of equipment and adaptations where standard items of equipment can be accessed without the need for a full community care assessment, or directly by the user themselves.

4. Partnerships should work together to agree the range of equipment and adaptations that will be provided, and the funding streams for these.

5. Local Authorities should identify all their spending on equipment and adaptations across their services including social work, education and housing services with the aim of integrating provision of standard equipment and adaptations with their health colleagues. Health services should carry out a similar review. This could involve the use of pooled budgets and establishing joint stores for the provision of 'standard' equipment and adaptations.

6. Models of provision should cover: protocol for access, information for service users, review of equipment catalogues, training and quality assurance as well as provision, including, maintenance, review and recycling. Models should also ensure there are robust performance management systems in place.

7. Local partners should review the benefits from their current models of delivery and consider the advantages from an integrated approach across services and agencies.

8. Local partnership should target occupational therapy services more effectively. Agencies need to remove duplication and streamline pathways of service provision between hospital and community based occupational therapy services and reallocate their professional expertise to meet the needs of local service provision

Consultation process

You are invited to respond to the particular questions set out in Annex D. In addition to the written consultation we will be running a number of regional stakeholder events. The dates of these will be posted on the Equipment and Adaptations website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/care/EandA.

If you have any questions about this consultation please contact Isla Bisset on 0131 244 3748 or email isla.bisset@scotland.gsi.gov.uk.

Your sincerely

Mike Martin
Deputy Director
Partnership Imnprovement and Outcomes Division

The immediately following pages set out the Scottish Government's standart practice for consultations.

EQUIPMENT AND ADAPTATIONS GUIDANCE FOR HEALTH AND LOCAL AUTHORITY PARTNERSHIPS - CONSULTATION ON DRAFT GUIDANCE

Responding to this consultation paper

We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by 31 March 2009.

Please send your response to:

Amy.phillips@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or

Amy Phillips

If you have any queries contact Isla Bisset on 0131 244 3748.We would be grateful if you would use the consultation questionnaire provided as this will aid our analysis of the responses received. This consultation, and all other Scottish Executive consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 tofind out where your nearest public internet access point is. The Scottish Executive now has an email alert system for consultations (SEconsult:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/seconsult.aspx). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). SEconsult complements, but in no way replaces SE distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SE consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly. All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Executive are subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public (see the attached Respondent Information Form), these will be made available to the public in the Scottish Executive Library and on the Scottish Executive consultation web pages. We will check all responses where agreement to publish has been given for any potentially defamatory material before logging them in the library or placing them on the website. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SE Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next ?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on the equipmenr and adaptations guidance. We aim to issue a report on this consultation process by 30 April 2009.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to Amy Philips (contact details above).

ANNEX C - THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT CONSULTATION PROCESS

Consultation is an essential and important aspect of Scottish Government working methods. Given the wide-ranging areas of work of the Scottish Government, there are many varied types of consultation. However, in general, Scottish Government consultation exercises aim to provide opportunities for all those who wish to express their opinions on a proposed area of work to do so in ways which will inform and enhance that work.

The Scottish Government encourages consultation that is thorough, effective and appropriate to the issue under consideration and the nature of the target audience. Consultation exercises take account of a wide range of factors, and no two exercises are likely to be the same.

Typically Scottish Government consultations involve a written paper inviting answers to specific questions or more general views about the material presented. Written papers are distributed to organisations and individuals with an interest in the issue, and they are also placed on the Scottish Government web site enabling a wider audience to access the paper and submit their responses. Consultation exercises may also involve seeking views in a number of different ways, such as through public meetings, focus groups or questionnaire exercises. Copies of all the written responses received to a consultation exercise (except those where the individual or organisation requested confidentiality) are placed in the Scottish Government library at Saughton House, Edinburgh (K Spur, Saughton House, Broomhouse Drive, Edinburgh, EH11 3XD, telephone 0131 244 4565).

All Scottish Government consultation papers and related publications (eg, analysis of response reports) can be accessed at: Scottish Government consultations ( http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations)

The views and suggestions detailed in consultation responses are analysed and used as part of the decision making process, along with a range of other available information and evidence. Depending on the nature of the consultation exercise the responses received may:

• indicate the need for policy development or review
• inform the development of a particular policy
• help decisions to be made between alternative policy proposals
• be used to finalise legislation before it is implemented

Final decisions on the issues under consideration will also take account of a range of other factors, including other available information and research evidence.

While details of particular circumstances described in a response to a consultation exercise may usefully inform the policy process, consultation exercises cannot address individual concerns and comments, which should be directed to the relevant public body.

ANNEX D - CONSULTATION QUESTIONNAIRE

EQUIPMENT AND ADAPTATIONS GUIDANCE FOR HEALTH AND LOCAL AUTHORITY PARTNERSHIPS - CONSULTATION ON DRAFT GUIDANCE

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