Lincolnshire County Council assessment

Indicative score:

3 - Evidence shows a good standard

What people expect:

“I have care and support that is coordinated, and everyone works well together and with me.”

The local authority commitment:

We understand our duty to collaborate and work in partnership, so our services work seamlessly for people. We share information and learning with partners and collaborate for improvement.

Key findings for this quality statement

Partnership working was one of the real strengths of the local authority. High level strategies were co-produced with partner organisations where appropriate and have a focus on partnership working. The commissioning strategies were focused on partnership working with appropriate governance systems in place to oversee the quality of the service. There were examples of pooled budgets with the local health system and integrated teams, for example the hospital discharge teams. The local authority was seen as an equal partner by those in the health system.

The feedback was very positive from all the partner organisations we spoke with, including health, voluntary and community sector, service user-led organisations and providers of homecare and residential/nursing care. They all spoke very highly of the commitment of the local authority to working in this way. They spoke positively about the quality of the relationships between the local authority and themselves with the shared view that, despite the occasional challenges in working in this way, the local authority was committed to it.

There was a shared aim of achieving improved outcomes for people through joint working, whether this was through formal partnership agreements or through less formal relationship building with other teams and organisations to best be able to meet someone’s needs.

We received mixed views from people about how smoothly their move between services was, with most people satisfied with the communication and support when they moved between services. However, some reported that they felt that communication could have been improved. The local authority had already identified areas where improvements were needed and some of the more recent service developments, such as the integrated hospital discharge teams, had resulted from that.

There are section 75 agreements in place with health providers, which enables the local authority to commission health providers to commission and provide social care. These are in place for services for people with a learning disability as well as people with a mental health need. We heard about positive outcomes for individuals because of the health and social care teams working in this way. This included people being involved with one professional rather than several, which had been their experience previously. This enabled them to build more effective relationships with them and meant that they did not have to keep repeating their story.