Adult Social Care Local Account 2024/25

Our collective vision for people in Gateshead is:

"to work with our communities to enable residents to live thriving lives, be independent and individual, support themselves and each other, and access personalised quality support when they need it".

Adult social care aims to promote the wellbeing of people who draw on care and support, we also seek to prevent, reduce and delay the need for care and support, and to keep people safe from abuse or neglect. Gateshead Councils Integrated Adults and Social Care Services cater for a diverse range of needs, from long term residential care to short term care and in-house support.

Within our service we deliver a number of functions and enjoy close links with external providers and partners to deliver services and support the work we do; our key functional areas are:

• community, assessment and prevention
• safeguarding, mental health, learning disabilities and complex needs
• commissioning and integration with health
• performance, service development and business assurance

Care Quality Commission rated us as Good

"We saw multiple examples of partnership working to address challenges around deprivation and health inequalities, such as focused work to tackle the impacts that poverty and deprivation had on people's health and wellbeing, through support around income maximization and responding to specific health challenges people faced in deprived communities"

"There was a positive culture in which leaders were visible and accessible to staff and teams. Staff described feeling settled and supported during a time of transformation and change. Strategy was informed by data, feedback and was targeted. There was coherence of vision between partners and where we found shortfalls, they were already the focus of improvement activity by the local authority"

"Records we reviewed showed staff check people were happy with their support and that planned care was meeting their needs"

"There have been good outcomes achieved in improving homecare provision, with local authority data showing substantial reductions in the time people waited for homecare in the previous 12 months. The local authority was continuing to develop its approach to homecare commissioning and there were pilots underway to move forward to an outcome-focussed model."