Information, advice and guidance
We know that it can be unclear who to contact when you need to speak to someone about when you need support to remain independent and at home. The @Home programme will make sure that you can access the health and support services that you need as easily as possible. Teams from across the NHS, local councils, and the third sector are working hard to create a ‘single point of access’ for all adult support services no matter who delivers them.
At first there will be differences in who you contact to access services depending on whether you live in Cardiff or the Vale of Glamorgan, but in the future, we want people to be able to access support in the same way wherever they live.
If you live in Cardiff…
Cardiff Council has a First Point of Contact (FPOC) is a single way of accessing all your independent living needs, such as:
- The Community Occupational Therapy
- Wellbeing Visiting Officers
- Day Opportunities Team
- Disabled Facilities Service
- Floating Support
- The Community Resource Team
- The ‘Pink Army’ at the University Hospital of Wales
- Social Care
The FPOC service offers tailored information, advice, and guidance to people with both preventative community, and statutory services. The FPOC service features highly skilled staff at the end of a phone line who can help you stay at home and connected to your community. They will listen, and hear what matters to you, and with you, agree, what you need to ensure you can retain your independence and stay in your own home for as long as possible. They will provide tailored information and advise that meets your goals, and what matters to you. If they are unable to meet any of your needs with community support, they will, with your agreement, have a more comprehensive assessment carried out by an Occupational Therapist, or Social Worker, who are all part of the FPOC.
Whether you need planned hospital treatment, are being discharged from hospital, or are accessing care or support services in the community, there will be a real focus on what matters to you in relation to your care. This will be through a “What Matters?” conversation where your individual needs, and what matters to you , your goals are agreed and you’re matched with the right support, in the right place in to meet them. This could result, community services, working with our Wellbeing visiting officers, or assess to, occupational therapy assessment, a strengths-based reablement approach that looks at your whole care network to help you stay at home and live independently. If you have more complex care needs, such as care at home, or residential care, then social workers will continue to ensure that you receive the right support.
Another key feature of improving access into services is the Wellbeing Visiting Service, our wellbeing officers are able to visit you at home, review your living environment, and talk through what matters to you. They will then be able to connect you as a appropriate to health, care, and support services including community groups, digital connection support, debt advice, access to white goods, and support with everyday issues. As trained professionals, they can also make referrals directly for low level aids and equipment without needing to involve another professional, helping support you with what you need as quickly as possible.
Finally, if you find yourself in hospital care for a period of time but are discharged and returned home – or to a community care setting if you need some additional support – there is a Discharge Hub created at the University Hospital of Wales which will bring together a multidisciplinary team of professionals who will support you with a safe and timely transfer out of hospital and connect you to the services that you need on an ongoing basis. The team in the Discharge Hub will work as hard as possible to support you to go home but if that’s not possible then they will find the right short-term community setting for you until you’re ready to move home. A friendly team of staff, known as the ‘Pink Army’ thanks to their bright pink uniform, will work with you to understand your needs and wishes into the Discharge Hub and ensure that what matters to you is part of the decision making to help you leave hospital.
If you live in the Vale of Glamorgan…
The Vale of Glamorgan has single phone number that connects you to a range of care and support services, through the Council’s contact centre, Contact One Vale (C1V). The C1V contact centre employs experienced call handlers who have access to expert advisers, so they can direct you to services that best suit your needs across community nursing and adult social services and services such as waste, housing, and benefits.
In the future, the service through the Contact One Vale centre will be expanded to provide you with a single route in to access even more health, care, and support services in the Vale of Glamorgan. This service will be known as the ‘Wellbeing Matters’ service. Our ambition is for you and your caring network to be able to access services as quickly and easily as possible in the future, with a record kept of what matters to you.
Multidisciplinary teams of health and care professionals will work together to review what matters in your care and work with you to support you to live independently and stay at home for as long as possible and prevent negative health outcomes, such as falls. To do this, the multidisciplinary teams will review what is most important to you and connect you to the services that you need, from aids and equipment to telecare and adult nursing services.
Our ambition is for the Wellbeing Matters service to provide you with a single way of accessing services including:
Health Services
- Continence
- Wound Service
- Acute Response Team (ART)
- District Nursing
- Phlebotomy
- Muscular Skeletal service for physio first point of contact (Cluster-based)
- Mental Health Liaison Service (cluster)
- Falls service (physio led)
- Equipment (beds) return and management
Council Services
- Customer Relations – all the main frontline council services and safeguarding
- Occupational therapy / aids and equipment
- Independent Living Service – adaptations (Ambition)
Third Sector Services
- Community Liaison Social prescribing
- Mind In The Vale
Vale Community Resource Service and Community Triage Service
Our Priorities
DECHRAU’N DDA
STARTING WELL
We want every child in Cardiff and Vale to have the opportunity to thrive. Our work focuses on children in vulnerable situations and the services that support them.
HENEIDDIO’N DDA
AGEING WELL
We know how hard it can be to find help when people need it the most. We want to make sure there is community support to help people stay as healthy as possible so they can carry on doing the things that matter most to them.
BYW’N DDA
LIVING WELL
As a Partnership we have worked together with people with a learning disability, their families, carers and the third and independent sector to produce a clear direction for the planning and delivery of adult learning disability services across the region over the next five years.