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Home First Community

Information about care in your own home to prevent admission to hospital.

About Home First Community

The Home First Community provides time limited, short term rehabilitation and reablement support to adults (aged 18 years and over) across North Lincolnshire. This helps you to continue to live independently in your own home, or place of your choice.

We provide a flexible service that:

  • is tailored to meet your individual needs
  • values the diversity of the people we support
  • treats you with respect
  • promotes your independence and personal dignity
  • supports you to improve your mobility
  • meets social care needs and helps with daily living activities
  • works in partnership with other social care and health professionals to prevent avoidable admission to hospital
  • helps appropriate early discharge
  • enables people to recognise and reach their full potential
  • gives people the confidence to remain at home
  • enables people to feel and be safe
  • maximises good health and wellbeing

Further information

We will work in partnership with you, and your family and circle of support, to explore ways of improving your independence. This might mean doing some daily tasks differently or using equipment to support you to carry out daily living tasks. Together we will create a support plan that is designed to enhance your independence, helping you to remain living in your own home.

At our first visit with you we will provide you with information about our short term service, including a welcome guide and a folder which will contain information about you. This includes your assessment and key information for example your next of kin and GP.

We will ask you what your daily routine was like before you became unwell or injured and we will work to help you get back to your optimum level of independence. Together we will develop a Daily Programme of Care which details how you wish your support to be delivered daily and how we will carry this out together.

We monitor your progress with you. We will do this by discussing progress on a daily basis and holding review meetings with you and your family or circle of support. Any changes identified will be made to your Daily Programme of Care as required. As you achieve the goals set out we will review the amount of support you need and make adjustments accordingly.

If you are identified as requiring longer term support, we will work with you to see how these needs can be appropriately met. You may be eligible for a personal budget from Adult Services. A personal budget is the amount of social care money that is available from us to pay for your support.

Home First Community cannot provide ongoing services once you have reached your optimum independence, as we need to be able to support others to reach their potential. However, you and your family will be fully involved in how you’re on going support needs will be met.

Individual support plan

This is a folder where all your personal information is kept together, for example your support plan and risk assessments. Also included in this folder are lots of useful information leaflets.

Daily programme of care

Together we will identify your needs and areas of risk. We will decide together how we can support you to meet your needs and manage any risks. Your Daily Programme of Care will provide information on your chosen routine of care. This document is continuously reviewed because needs change (sometimes on a daily basis) and we have to respond to these changes to make sure that we’re delivering the right care.

We will actively include your wishes and preferences when developing your Daily Programme of Care. We will consult with you when making changes, to ensure that you are fully satisfied with the care you are receiving.

Copies of these documents will be kept in your home – they are your records. We will refer to and write on these documents each time we visit you and you can look at them at any time. We also recognise the value of involving your family and circle of support in your Daily Programme of Care, and we will always (with your permission) invite them to support you.

Personal care 

You will be supported and encouraged to do as much as you possibly can for yourself to get you back to being as independent as possible.

Initially, you may need a little bit of assistance with personal care tasks you cannot manage yourself, but we will work with you to improve your ability to do this yourself.  We will offer you advice and support around equipment and assistive technology that may be useful to you.

We will also talk to you about what level of support you might need initially to take any medicines that have been prescribed for you by your doctor.  We will discuss this in full with you and your carers.

We want to support you to regain skills you may have lost and help you to be as independent as you can. Once you have regained these skills we will reduce services until you no longer need our support or the maximum time limit of support has been reached, whichever is the sooner.

Preparation of meals and snacks

We will work with you to prepare and cook meals including breakfast, midday meal, evening meal or supper, and any other snacks and drinks that you may need during the day.  In some cases the support worker may be able to sit with you while you have your meals and encourage you to eat.

Specialist services

We will help you to find additional support if needed. For example, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, assisted technology, help with a sensory impairment, and any other kind of help.

Pets

It may be possible for our support worker to assist you to look after your small animals if you are unable to for a short period.  This will be discussed with you and agreed in your support plan.

Support at night

The “Roving Night Service” provides support throughout the night to assist you. We will assess whether aids such as assisted technology would be more responsive to your individual needs or enable you to regain your independence.  We aim to be flexible and responsive in our service delivery, ensuring we are able to meet any changes to your support.

At the start of your support you will receive a letter to inform you who your care team will be. These are the people that you will see most regularly. If they are not able to attend, due to sickness or an emergency, you may see another member of staff.  We will let you know if this happens and tell you the name of the replacement worker. This may be in the form of a letter if the absence is planned, or by telephone if it is short notice. All staff carry identity badges with photographs so please ask to see their badge if you see someone new.

When we come to your home we will always be wearing a uniform. In the summer our staff wear a royal blue and navy tunic with navy trousers, in the winter they wear a mid-blue pin stripe dress or tunic with navy trousers. They will wear an appropriate identification badge with photograph so that they are easily identifiable to you.

Equipment

We need to make sure that any equipment we use to help you in your home is safe. If the equipment belongs to you then you are responsible for this and if this is not regularly serviced then staff may be unable to use it in line with health and safety requirements.

Smoking

Under the No Smoking Law (2007) everyone has the right to breathe fresh air. We appreciate that some people do smoke, but as our staff visit you in your own home we have a duty to protect staff under Health and Safety at Work Regulations.  We would appreciate your cooperation and would be grateful if you, and any family or friends, could refrain from smoking for one hour before we arrive and whilst we are present.  We would also request that we have a room to work in which is well ventilated to ensure we do not inhale second hand smoke. This could be by opening a window.

Your family or circle of support

Your family or circle of support may be entitled to a Carers Assessment in their own right. A carer is someone who helps another person in their day to day life. This is usually a relative or friend. It is not the same as someone who provides care professionally or through a voluntary organisation.

A Carer’s Needs Assessment concentrates on the needs of the carer and the support needed to continue in their caring role. It looks at how caring impacts on their wellbeing and if they are willing and able to continue caring. The assessment will aim to identify ways in which we could provide some help to your carer and support them in their ongoing caring role for you.

We work to a strict code of conduct, which includes preserving the confidentiality of all information that you tell us and all information we hold on you. We will not disclose it to anyone else without your permission, except in an emergency, which may include The Care Quality Commission. When this happens we will keep you informed of any discussions that have taken place and this will be recorded in your care records to which you may have access at any time. This is in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulation.

We have an excellent team of highly skilled, professional support staff. Our safer recruitment processes ensure the people we recruit have the right values and beliefs to work in care. Each worker undergoes a programme of induction and has continuous training to ensure we deliver the highest quality services to you.

Accountability

When we visit you in your home we need to record the ways in which we have supported you, as agreed in your Daily Programme of Care.

Therefore, at the end of each visit we will request that you, or your representative, sign a mobile phone screen to confirm the work has been undertaken.

If ever you are in any doubt about what you are being asked to sign for, please contact us if you wish to discuss this. You can decline to sign it until your query is resolved.

Please note that due to the nature of our service we are required to spend time completing paperwork.

Gifts and gratuities

Our job is to ensure that you receive the best possible care. We are rewarded enough when we receive compliments from the people who use our services. There is no need to offer any gifts, tips or gratuities as we are unable to accept them.

Under no circumstances can any staff members become involved in the making of service users’ wills, helping them draw up a will, or receive bequests.

Duty of Candour

We are required to act in an open and transparent way with you, your family and carers with regard to the care we provide.

This means that:

  • We will tell you, in person, as soon as reasonably practicable after becoming aware that a notifiable safety incident has occurred, and provide support to you and your carers and family in relation to the incident.
  • We will provide an account of the incident which, to the best of our knowledge, is true of all the facts we know about the incident on the date we were informed.
  • We will inform you, your family and carers what further enquiries are required as appropriate.
  • We will offer a verbal apology and follow this up with the same information in writing, and provide an update to any enquiries.
  • We will keep a written record of all communication with you, your family and carers.

Our service charges

There is no charge for Rehabilitation and Reablement for up to a maximum of six weeks. Service provision beyond this time will attract a charge, details of which are set out in our fact sheet.

Compassion in practice – the six Cs

Our vision and strategy for good practice are underpinned by the six Cs which describe Compassion in Practice for all health and care professionals.

  1. Care is our core business and that of our organisations. The care we deliver helps the individual person and improves the health of the whole community. Caring defines us and our work. People receiving care expect it to be right for them, consistently, throughout every stage of their life.
  2. Compassion is how care is given through relationships based on empathy, respect and dignity – it can also be described as intelligent kindness, and is central to how people perceive their care.
  3. Competence means all those in caring roles must have the ability to understand an individual’s health and social needs and the expertise, clinical and technical knowledge to deliver effective care and treatments based on research and evidence.
  4. Communication is central to successful caring relationships and to effective team working. Listening is as important as what we say and do and essential for ‘no decision about me without me’. Communication is the key to a good workplace with benefits for those in our care and staff alike.
  5. Courage enables us to do the right thing for the people we care for, to speak up when we have concerns and to have the personal strength and vision to innovate and to embrace new ways of working.
  6. Commitment to our people and population is a cornerstone of what we do. We need to build on our commitment to improve the care and experience of the people we support, to take action to make this vision and strategy a reality for all and meet the health, care and support challenges ahead.

Our quality management system

We have a comprehensive self-assessment system which requires all of our policies and work practices to be checked at least annually to make sure that we maintain the standards we have set ourselves and have been set by organisations such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The Community Support Team Quality Assurance Framework identifies that we must carry out regular quality audits. The outcome of these will be fed into the Continuous Improvement Plan to ensure the standard of our services delivered remain high and in line with the CQC key lines of enquiry. We are committed to providing quality services and to ensure we do this we involve the people who use our services and their circle of support in our annual quality assurance consultations.

Inspections

We receive regular inspections from the Care Quality Commission to make sure we are working to achieve the best outcomes for the people we support. At our last inspection we were given an overall rating of “good”. Copies of the latest inspection reports are available on the CQC website.

We believe that only by asking the people who use our services can we obtain the information we need to help us to continually improve. We need to know when things have gone well and also if things are not going well so we can put them right.

We will ask you to complete two questionnaires about your views of the service.

The first is ‘How did we do?’ and will be completed with support from our staff at the end of your Rehabilitation and Reablement journey.

The second will be posted to you, and to your family and circle of support, six weeks following the end of your support. A stamped addressed envelope will be provided for your response.

The outcome of these questionnaires will be fed into our Continuous Improvement Plan. We welcome and encourage your feedback to support us to improve the services we offer.

Please feel free to offer your comments at any time during or after your support.

Unfortunately, we don’t get things right all the time and we need you to tell us when we get it wrong.  If you have a complaint we want to hear from you. You can make a complaint via our website.

Parent and child looking at wild flowers

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