Health and care partners from across Croydon have been working to develop a community approach to support healthy ageing across the borough.
With a higher-than-average population of residents aged over 65, there’s a key need to make sure health and care services for older people are designed and delivered to meet their needs.
Driven by the strategies for end of life care, frailty and care homes, the steering group is helping to support people to stay well for longer and live independent lives. They will also address the needs of the local population and help make better use of resources by working together.
Partners of the steering group include the NHS, the local voluntary sector and Croydon Council*, who recently came together to join the dots between end of life care, frailty and care home services and made recommendations to meet the aims of Croydon’s health and care plan.
We had our first collaborative steering group meeting involving EOLC, frailty and care homes. It provided a great opportunity for the different teams to get to know each other and work together towards the shared goal of delivering excellent care across the community for Croydon’s residents.”
Dr Nishal Velani, GP at Selsdon Park Medical Centre, Clinical Lead for End of Life Care and Frailty at Croydon Place.
It was great to get people together to share details of all the good work in progress; as well as work through the current challenges. The energy and enthusiasm from everyone who attended will definitely help bring the work across frailty, end of life and care homes together, to make things work better and quicker using the resources we have to best support patients and staff.”
Karen Barkway, Head of Primary and Community Care Transformation – Croydon.
Work already underway includes Croydon’s community approach to frailty, which aims to encourage health ageing and support people to live more independently. To enable this, frailty practitioners have been introduced to provide support and to identify people who may need support in the future.
The service has been beneficial to those in need by supporting them to return home following attendance at A&E and help to prevent the need to return back to hospital.
The steering group will continue to meet regularly to tailor services to the needs of the local community.
*Partners involved in the steering group include:
- NHS South West London ICB
- Croydon Council
- Asian Resource Centre of Croydon
- Croydon Health Services NHS Trust
- St Christopher’s Hospice
- Marie Curie
- London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
- Croydon BME Forum
- Age UK Croydon
- Croydon Voluntary Action
- Croydon Neighbourhood Care Association
- Dental representative
- Immedicare
- Optometry representatives