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Gathering data on local needs has helped Shropshire target its supporting people services, says Pete Sinden. Supporting people provides housing-related support to vulnerable people, to help them live independently and avoid going in to hospital, institutional care and homelessness, or to make the transition from institutional care to independent living. In Shropshire, the scheme delivers support costing £6.2m, across 99 services and 41 providers. We recently worked with the Shropshire team to look at where the services were going, who was using them, and how this information could be used to make the services more efficient. The team was aware that more of its clients came from urban areas than might be expected, given the large rural population in the county. This had raised concerns that access to services was a problem in rural areas, and there was a need for programmes to increase awareness in remote settings. But a deeper level of analysis revealed a different issue. Access to the programme was correlated with rural areas, but the causal link was more complex. When we looked at people's housing tenure, it was clear that many were referred to SP through social housing or organisations concerned with social support and homelessness. When we took these people out of the analysis, the sign-up rate was roughly the same for those in towns and rural areas. The real problem was increasing access for people who were not already known to the council. The focus now is to increase awareness for self-referral to all residents of the county who are not already receiving assistance. Other interesting results included forecasts of increased demands on support for older people, an understanding of why more women are supported than men, and the need to support young adults with moderate learning difficulties at a time when they move away from children's services. There was also a need to increase the involvement of the voluntary sector in providing services. In all, 44% of services provided under the programme were for people aged over 65, at a cost of £1.8m in 2008. Based on demographic changes alone, these are forecast to grow by around 20% in the next five years. Reducing loneliness for vulnerable people was highlighted as a major concern for many clients, especially among the elderly and rurally isolated. Involving the voluntary sector in this has been identified as an important way to expand community support. When we looked at why women had more support, it was a result of the help given to younger women escaping domestic violence or to homeless families, which were often lone parent families. While the support given to these groups is good, the supporting people programme managers are conscious there is a need to constantly review their prioritisation. The role of preventative services, an area in which Shropshire is already strong, is particularly important. Neil Evans, commissioning and partnerships manager for supporting people, says: ‘This presents a real challenge for the supporting people programme and emphasises the need to prioritise and commission services in light of a strong evidence base. ‘One of the key areas for Shropshire to take forward as a whole is the role of extra care housing in our ongoing strategy development.' The initial evidence-gathering programme has helped create strong cross-directorate working between adult services, children's services, housing and health. Perhaps the greatest lesson learned was the need to gather more hard evidence along the delivery chain to feed into central information systems to help improve and encourage joined-up thinking and working. The council has now started using the virtual referral and outcomes network. A software system will help make sure accommodation and support needs are treated together to ensure clients have the right package of support and to help the council gather data to support its commissioning in future. Pete Sinden is head of business development at Dr Foster

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WHITEHALL

Mapping support

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