Think Home First Project Receives National Award

The “Think Home First” project has won the national “Success in Partnership Working” Award by the Department of Health and the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The award recognises those staff who have developed integrated services which are person-centred and cross professional and organisational boundaries.

In 2009 a survey of 1,600 individuals revealed that over a quarter of people in Northamptonshire were receiving care in the “wrong place”, particularly people who couldn`t be discharged from hospital because they were, for example, awaiting assessments from a range of different professional, needed adaptations making to their homes or lacked a carer whilst they recuperated.

Working in partnership with other health professionals to assess patients` needs, Serve established a Rapid Response Team which enables referred patients to return home safely and give ongoing support in their recuperation. This involves providing transport home and to medical appointments, adapting homes (e.g. fixing grab-rails and moving furniture such as beds), providing personal support (e.g. dressing, bathing), collecting prescriptions, cleaning and shopping. The Team also provides advice, support and advocacy in areas such as housing and benefits advice and ensures that the individual`s needs are being met in a timely manner.

Home for many people is the best place to recuperate and the project is proving to be very successful in terms of enabling patients to return home as soon as they are clinically able through a range of basic, but important, interventions. It is also helping to foster closer working between health professionals, preventing unnecessary discharge delays, aiding faster recovery and helping to prevent hospital readmissions.

The project was also received the national "Putting Patients and the Public First Award" at the same event.