Monthly shout-out: Gedling Falls Programme

This month’s ICS shout-out goes to the Gedling Falls Programme for work to establish falls prevention classes in the area.

The classes were set up after the coproduction partnership identified a gap in falls prevention services in Gedling. A project group was set-up with representatives from Gedling Borough Council, the Primary Care Network, Active Notts and a postural stability instructor, who worked in an integrated and collaborative way to use Ageing Well seed funding to set up three falls prevention classes in the community, aiming to improve the physical and mental health of Gedling residents in identified areas of health inequality.

70% of people attending the classes reported an increase in their strength and balance and 97% increased knowledge of how to get up from the floor on their own. Feedback shows they have been empowered to lead a more independent life, become more socially active and have not needed social care.

Fiona Hextall, Health Development Officer at Gedling Borough Council, said: “Falls have a huge impact on people who can lose mobility and the confidence to live independently, often ending up needing hospital and social care. We worked with a number of agencies to set up falls prevention classes in Gedling after feedback from the community showed there was a gap in these services in the area.

“The classes have been well attended and have now continued past the pilot period. The strength balance and social confidence of the attendees is improving, helping to reduce health and social care costs.”

A physiotherapist from Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust said: “The classes are very helpful to our therapy service.  Some patients are being directed straight from telephone triage and are attending a class much faster than we could hope to see routine falls referrals.”

Well done to everyone involved!

Insights into our local communities

A new Insight Report has been published which brings together intelligence gathered from listening to our communities across the Integrated Care System.

The report, which was presented to the Integrated Care Partnership in October, provides a summary of the activities and findings from engagement work across the system. This includes engagement work to develop the Integrated Care Strategy, insights from our Partners Assemblies and the business-as-usual engagement carried out by all system partners.

The report will support the work of the Integrated Care Strategy to help meet the needs of our communities.

Some of the insights include:

  • The population of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire in 2021 is larger, older, less likely to be in a legal relationship and less white than 10 years ago.
  • Our population generally support a shift to prevention and an approach centred in equity – but for both of these changes they are sceptical about how this can be achieved while protecting existing services.
  • Improving support for older individuals includes collaborating across agencies, enhancing access to various services, reducing isolation and addressing transportation issues, while improving digital literacy and innovation in dementia care.
  • For children young people and families, there needs to be more support provided around breastfeeding together with services being more co-ordinated and promoted to understand what people can access and when. Additionally, there should be more support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
  • The experiences of racial minority groups, especially within Nottingham City, in accessing health and care services is multi-faceted and complex and requires dedicated attention to improve.

The report makes a number of recommendations which will now be considered by the Integrated Care Strategy Steering Group. The report will also feed into the development of an Evaluation Framework that will help us measure the impact of our Strategy.

Read the Insights Report

Community Care Transformation podcast

The Community Care Transformation programme aims to plan and deliver sustainable community care services that help local people be as independent as possible by supporting their physical, mental and social needs. The programme involves people from health, care, the voluntary sector and local communities who work together to introduce ‘place-based’ community teams which use population health data to drive services based on local needs. These see all the partners working together better and linking with other community organisations such as charities to support local people in improving their own health outcomes.

Dr Kathy McLean (Chair of the Integrated Care Board) chats to Steven Smith (Programme Manager for Community Transformation at the ICB), Pam Rumbell (Organisational Development Lead for Community Transformation at the ICB), Vicky Gutteridge (Senior Strategic Director at Age UK Nottingham and Nottinghamshire) and Louise Casey-Simpson (Deputy Chief Executive of Newark CVS) about the impact of the Community Care Transformation Programme in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.

Monthly shout-out – to the Mental Health Support Team

Well done to the Mental Health Support Team (MHST) who have won this month’s ‘shout out’ for their excellent partnership work.

The MHST have worked with young people to co-produce peer mentoring services for schools. These are equipping young people to support each other and promoting an honest culture around mental health to help keep children well.

Young people have been asked to apply to become mentors before being interviewed and trained. They are then appointed a mentee to support via group supervision. The staff team really enjoy delivering this training and it has been really well received by the young people and parents the team has worked with.

The young people who have been supported have fed back that they are ‘more confident’, ‘more patient’ and have learned ‘how to calm down in certain situations’. They also reflected that they have learned to ‘speak to others when you’re in need of help’ and to ‘talk about feelings more’.

The young mentors have also gained ‘communication skills’ and ‘confidence and empathy’.

As well as the peer-to-peer mentoring, the MHST provides one to one and group workshops for young people and also delivers training and advice to school and college staff.

Find out more about the Mental Health Support Team.

Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System newsletter – December 2022