Across Scotland, from community through to acute services, we are facing extraordinary pressures as we head into Winter ’21. The impact has been most visible in ambulance and acute services, and the volume of calls GP surgeries receive each day remains extremely high. Equally we know that community organisations, playing their part in helping people stay well in their own home, have faced significant pressures of their own.
Last year the country saw community and third sector organisations adapt and respond to the pandemic, helping support the health and wellbeing of people in our communities. Their response was unprecedented and we learned a lot about what it takes to enable community and third sector organisations to adapt and mobilised rapidly.
Clearly Winter ’21 is going to put a strain on the health and wellbeing of our communities and will impact on our health and social care systems. Helping people stay safe and well in their own home is a priority. People may need to access unscheduled care services (anything from calls to GPs, Out of Hours appointments to A&E attendances) but it benefits wellbeing when they can return to their own homes as soon as they are medically fit to do so. Sometimes this may require some additional support in order to make this happen quicker, for example transport; someone checking in on them within 24 hrs; some simple aids.
As well as benefiting the person, it helps reduce some of the capacity pressures in primary care and acute services. By ensuring that people who can be supported by other organisations and services receive this support to stay safe and well in their home means that Primary Care and Acute services can treat those people who are in medical need.
We want to bring together key community and third sector organisations to understand some of the community solutions that can support people to stay well in their own home – what do they require to make this happen? What do they need from other organisations?
If you would like to attend, please book your space here for Wednesday 3rd November 10am – 11.30am or Thursday 4th November 3pm – 4.30pm
We will use the content from these sessions to inform the national conversation with Scottish Government and other national bodies about what needs to happen to support the Community Solutions for Winter ‘21.
There will be follow up sessions to discuss how this work can progress practically and what steps are being taken to support this work.
