A report providing the Committee with an update on the Council’s offer around supporting residents back home from hospital and the support to local acute and community hospitals during the Covid pandemic.

The Executive Director of Social Care and Health submitted a report giving an update on the Council’s offer around supporting residents back home from hospital, and support to local acute and community hospitals (excluding the Mental Health inpatient hospital), during the Covid pandemic. The report also provided assurance that Adult Social Care was working with health partners to ensure ongoing timely discharge from hospital post-pandemic.  Appendix A to the report gave further information on the Huntley Place Discharge to Assess service.

The report explained that, from the outset of the Covid-19 crisis, it had been realised that the demand for acute hospital beds would be high and the optimisation of flow out of hospital would be a priority.  It gave details of the changes made by Government to legislation, guidance and funding and set out the range of provisions and arrangements which had been stood up in Reading to deliver the new discharge requirements. These included:

·      Four existing independent living flats at Charles Clore Court;

·      Commissioning of additional bedded capacity at Riverview Nursing Home of ten beds, as well as short term urgent bed capacity at the Holiday Inn up to 20 beds;

·      With the learning from the Holiday Inn model and 3-month interim funding, piloting of a future model of discharge to assess and admission avoidance for Reading. In January 2022, a temporary Discharge Service at Huntley Place had been opened as a new resource to support people who needed temporary access to care and support, with a reablement ethos and with the number of beds and associated level of care being scalable depending on the need; 

·      Adult Social Care had been able to increase capacity across the ‘Home First’ pathway ie Social Workers, Occupational Therapists, and Care Assessors working in the hospital, supporting the discharge to the patient’s home or care home, and undertaking the assessment in the community, rather than in the hospital setting. Adult Social Care had been able to offer extended hours in the weekday evenings and weekends. All this had resulted in reduced length of stay in the hospital and hospital flow during very difficult covid and winter pressures.

The report stated that Reading had succeeded in stepping up the additional capacity at pace to respond to the new guidance and had made significant improvements in the length of stay of patients who had previously been significantly delayed in hospital. However, delivering the Government expectations around Home First – which was that 95% of patients would go straight home from hospital had been challenging; in Reading the figure was 87%. 

It gave further details of relevant statistics and concluded that, based on reviews of placements, placing patients in a temporary care home setting post discharge did not deliver good outcomes and in the majority of cases had resulted in the patient remaining in that setting, therefore the Council would continue to work with system partners to adopt a home first approach for discharge to assess services, further details of which were set out in the report.

Resolved –    That the report be noted and the Committee’s thanks to all the staff involved be recorded.