Congratulations go to Torbay Council’s Adult Social Care Commissioning Team, led by Head Commissioner John Bryant, who have been announced as a finalist in the forthcoming national LaingBuisson Awards for their work on Torbay’s Living Well@Home project.

Living Well@Home is a new and innovative approach to supporting and caring for people at home and is a partnership between the Joint Commissioning Team, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust and Mears Care Limited. As well as providing care for people at home, the project is also helping to develop a more competent, confident and multi-skilled workforce. This means the carers are able to undertake a series of tasks that will reduce the number of visits and callers people need to receive while being cared for at home, whilst increasing the quality of those interactions and the time together. This way of working also focuses on their wellbeing and helps to develop circles of support around them, which leads to them having fulfilling lives.

Councillor Julien Parrott, Executive Lead for Adults and Children, said: “I would like to say well done to our Joint Commissioning Team, led by John and our partners for being recognised for their innovative way of working and providing this much need project to our community. By being able to do more, carers can spend extra time with their clients instead of lots of people spending small amounts of time and rushing off. The council, with our partners, are committed to continually working together to develop this capacity within the community. By focusing on providing more care at home, existing community resources are built upon and new ones created. This improves care within our local neighbourhoods, reduces social isolation as well as offering even better work and career opportunities for staff working in this vital sector.”

Dr Sonja Manton, Associate Director for Community Health and Social Care for Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said: “Living Well@Home is a significant change in the way domiciliary care is provided for local people. By working this way the potential benefits are important not just for the people receiving the care but for the staff providing more meaningful care as well. The staff will also be able to benefit from on-going training and career development making it increasingly attractive and rewarding work.”

Executive Director for Mears Care Limited, Alan Long, said: "The challenges for Health and Social care are immense. The evidence everywhere is that the three main drivers for meeting these challenges are strong local leadership, the desire to drive real innovation and a recognition that this is best done through close working with partner bodies. John Bryant and the Commissioning team in Torbay have demonstrated all of these drivers in abundance and I congratulate them for this"

Living Well@Home will be competing with other innovative projects from across the country in the Best Commissioner category.

LaingBuisson is the UK’s foremost and most highly regarded provider of information and market intelligence on the independent health, community care and childcare sectors and they will be holding the awards evening in November where all the winners will be announced.