As part of Tristone’s Social Care Snapshot report, we spoke to Doreen Kelly, managing director of Beyond Limits – part of the Tristone business community – about her views on the market.
Beyond Limits is an organisation that provides specialist care to adults with complex needs through bespoke supported living, allowing individuals to live independently. This not only reduces the burden placed on unpaid carers, such as family and friends, but also provides a route out of institutionalised care, enabling people to lead meaningful and rewarding lives. In Doreen’s own words, “we support people through thick and thin.”
A recent report, featuring Beyond Limits – A Deep Dive into the Small Supports Experience in Plymouth – highlighted the difference the provider is making by taking a different approach to bespoke supported living. This included significant cost savings to the public purse, as well as positive outcomes for those individuals in their care. The report stated that the organisation improved wellbeing scores from an average of 2.6 to 8.3 out of 10, generating an economic value of more than £750,000 for nine individuals in just one year.
Social care for adults with complex needs has long been regarded as the poor relation in the sector, with children’s and elderly care readily attracting more attention and headlines. This is a point not lost on Doreen. She is a vehement advocate for people with learning difficulties, mental health issues, and other support needs, fighting not only for their right to live an independent life, but also to have the same human rights as other people – something she believes is compromised in a system that often resigns them to long spells in institutionalised care.
The challenges for Doreen and Beyond Limits are no different to other social care providers in many respects, but there are nuances that come with each sub-sector, which includes transforming the care agenda and ultimately closing care institutions.
“People with learning disabilities and mental health issues can often get stuck in long stay hospitals and large institutions for many years,” she explains. “Aside from it being a big waste of taxpayers’ money, those individuals are not getting good enough care. What we need is an individualised support approach that assigns appropriate budgets to each individual.
“While there is fantastic work happening every single day to achieve excellent outcomes for people, there is a real need for the sector to modernise its thinking. We need to move away from the mentality of ‘them and us’ and start to think about how we would design adult social care services if we were doing it for ourselves – it would be entirely different. Fundamentally, more focus needs to put on people’s human rights and the simple requirements of providing individuals with their own home, a family life, and the power to manage their own personal budgets and choose their own course in life. They are citizens of this country, just like you or me. They have got the right to good quality care, as well as a good home.”
The issue of finding a good home is a significant one for Doreen. “Ensuring there is enough good housing for people with disabilities to live in, so they can lead independent lives with the right support structure around them, is hugely important,” she comments.
Prior to the General Election, Labour touched upon ‘home-first care’ to help people live independently, but it steered away from detail. It’s clear that more needs to be said and done around adult social care across the piste – whether this is by stimulating the investment market through greater mortgage options, or by looking at the part housing benefits have to play in the supported living system.
When it comes to business priorities, Beyond Limits closely aligns with the national picture, which shows that improving outcomes for service users is number one for 34% of social care businesses.
“Ultimately, funding is not being used to achieve great things and deliver fantastic outcomes, and that needs to addressed as a matter of urgency,” says Doreen.
She also agrees with nearly a third of respondents (31%) that more needs to be done to address the endemic recruitment and retention issues in social care.
“More funding is needed in the area of employment in the care sector,” she explains. “The work is taxing, difficult and involves safeguarding the lives of others. Therefore, more money should be injected into the sector to enable providers to pay employees a higher rate of pay to acknowledge the importance of their role, as well as the outstanding work that is carried out day in, day out for some of our most vulnerable people. On the other hand, as a sector, we also need to make sure that what funding we do have is used in a more efficient and innovative way to provide better services, which ultimately save money in the long term. ”
The Deep Dive report highlights that this approach works. Beyond Limits has shown that a care model that prioritises holistic wellbeing can be highly effective and lead to both improved quality of life for individuals and significant cost savings of more than £200,000.
