Cambridgeshire County Council Visiting Support Services for Older People

The Cambridgeshire Older People's Strategy outlines Cambridgeshire's vision for older people to live actively and independently and engaged in their communities for as long as possible, knowing that if they need services, they will be flexible, creative, co-ordinated, and focused on keeping them well. By working together, Cambridgeshire County Council, City and district councils, the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group and the voluntary sector organisations want to ensure that: Older people remain independent, living in homes that are appropriate to their needs and actively engaged in their communities for as long as possible; People retain or regain the skills and confidence to look after themselves and their families into older age; Carers of older people are able to cope with and sustain their caring role and choose the support which is right for them; Older people live with dignity, are safe and protected from harm and isolation. The providers of the Visiting Support Service will support older people to live independently by initially carrying out an assessment to ascertain their support needs and work with the individual to achieve their agreed outcomes. The service will be a visiting support service and is intended to be short-term and will provide a flexible, practical service to support people's independence. It is intended that each of the services will be based on the respective district council boundaries. This shall ensure that information about the service will be easily accessible from a range of sources and other services that older people may already be accessing. The support service will be a visiting support service, and if appropriate it could be organised from sheltered housing schemes or community buildings and delivered on a hub and spoke basis. It is envisaged that the service shall operate on Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm. Outside of these hours a dedicated point of contact for each of the services should be publicised so that people who wish to access the service can leave their contact details. The support service shall be time limited and expectations of service users should be managed to ensure the service is not dependency creating.

Additional information: At the time of this advert Centra Support advised they will not be bidding to retain the Fenland Older Person's Outreach Service. Centra Support is now part of the Clarion Housing Group which was formed in 2016 following the merger of Circle Housing and the Affinity Sutton Group. Centra Support have stated that this is neither a reflection on the quality of the services provided in Cambridgeshire, nor of relationships with commissioners; both of which are excellent. Centra is committed to working positively with future providers to ensure a smooth transfer of responsibilities for the benefit of service users, staff and commissioners.