Good progress has been made on improving services for older people in the Western Isles, inspectors have said.
The Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland today published a progress review of services for older people.
A joint inspection in March 2016 identified “significant weaknesses” in some aspects of performance by health and social care services in the islands.
Several recommendations for improvement had been made to the Western Isles health and social care partnership.
This year, an inspection team returned to check progress on meeting the recommendations.
Inspectors found that good or very good progress has been made in almost all of these areas.
They noted that “an important reason for this appeared to be a determination by the council and the health board to put past differences behind them and not only to respond to the challenges of health and social integration, but also to work together to take advantage of the benefits which integration could offer.”
Key to this was the appointment and impact of the chief officer for the partnership in 2016.
He was “undertaking this role effectively, establishing positive and constructive working relationship with the range of stakeholders and galvanising support for better and real integrated working.”
Karen Reid, chief executive of the Care Inspectorate, said: “People want to experience care that is consistently high quality, with health and social care staff working together.
“In our latest review, we found that the health and social care partnership has responded well to our recommendations and made either very good or good progress in addressing almost all of them.
“Our inspectors found that the health and social care partnership was now in a much better place than it had been in 2015.”
She added: “Our inspectors have found that strengths which were already evident at our last inspection have prospered, resulting in an impressive improvement.
“There remained a few areas where improvements still need to be completed or where the pace of change needs to be accelerated, including redesigning of mental health services.
“We are pleased to see the impact of effective leadership, which helps ensure that services providing care and support for older people in the Western Isles are increasingly working together.
“The Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland will continue to engage with the partnership about the possibility of offering further support for improvement.”
Robbie Pearson, chief executive of Healthcare Improvement Scotland, said: “No doubt the communities of the Western Isles will be pleased to see the progress that has been made.
“Clearly there’s still work to be done, especially in the important area of mental health services, and we would encourage the partnership to continue making progress in this area.”
Cllr Kenny John Macleod, chairman of the integration joint board, said: “We are obviously very pleased to see the improvements delivered by staff across health and social care.
“There has been concerted action at all levels to better support older people in the Western Isles and it is good that this has been recognised by the inspection team.”
He added: “When the first inspection was undertaken in 2015 it was not uncommon to see older people stuck in hospital for many months – but we have witnessed a vast improvement in that area over the last few years.
“That has been helped by stronger community care services and by joint working across the NHS, Council and voluntary sector.
“The integration joint board has brought all stakeholders together to plan for the needs of our local population together.
“We know, of course, that we have more to do. We still face major challenges in relation to the recruitment of staff and we are still working through big programmes of reform which we hope will bring further benefits to older people who need support. But we are determined to make a success of this so that the people who use our services are able to access high quality care and support when they need it.”
Progress review of services for older people in the Western Isles
31 July 2018