What makes you happy?  Looking forward to travelling and seeing new places, spending time with family and friends, taking up a favourite sport or relaxing at home with a box set? 

When we think about what makes us happy, we often think about the big things because we can take for granted that the essentials are in place – like living somewhere you can call home, where you feel safe, doing things you enjoy and spending time with the people and things you care about.

We probably don’t spend a lot of time consciously thinking about these, but they’re probably the very things that matter most to all of us in our day-to-day lives. 

So, these questions and many more like them are what we want to talk about with the people we (Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership [HSCP] and our partners) support.  Through our ‘Maximising Independence’ approach, we aim to support people who can and want to live safely and independently at home for as long as possible. Maximising Independence involves absolutely everyone who cares and is cared for in Glasgow, no matter where in the health and social care system you are.  

It’s the biggest change in our health and social care system in a generation, and it can only happen if the right support is in place for carers and communities, too.

Maximising Independence isn’t a standalone programme – it’s a way of doing things that threads through how we all work with each other every day.  It’s putting people at the centre of processes rather than the other way around. It’s also how we listen, behave and speak with each other – showing kindness and respect and recognising our differences and strengths – as we work together as partners to build a strong, sustainable and reliable health and social care system for Glasgow that will stand the test of time.  And crucially, Maximising Independence means taking early action to promote wellbeing and prevent more serious problems happening later on.

Of course, this isn’t completely new – the people we support have been at the centre of their care plans for a number of years now, through initiatives like personalisation, reablement, anticipatory care planning and realistic medicine. 

We also already work with a wide range of partners in community and voluntary sectors to provide support and build thriving communities, and we’re improving how we manage unscheduled and out of hours care by tackling potential health issues earlier before they become crises.

But Maximising Independence means going much further now, being driven by people’s individual choices and human rights, creating solutions with and not for people and ensuring the right support is available, and easy to find, in the right place at the right time. 

Our Maximising Independence approach means that we recognise that it won’t always be traditional or statutory organisations or services who are best placed to support someone – a local community group or network may be better equipped and suited to their needs.  

The health and social care landscape across Glasgow is brimming with talented people and communities whose expertise, local knowledge, relationships, compassion, dedication and sheer hard work are invaluable. We’ve seen throughout the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic how local communities support each other in ways that matter to them.

So, we’re identifying where there are barriers and gaps that get in the way of people living their lives as independently as they can, and working out together who can best remove the barriers and fill these gaps.

So why are we talking about Maximising Independence now? Well, a number of factors have come together making this a good time to act.

Firstly, as we outlined in the June edition of our Partnership Matters Briefing, our population is getting older so we need to plan now to make sure people can live independently, safely and in good health for as long as possible, within the inevitable financial challenges we face.

Secondly, this isn’t just happening in Glasgow.  Creating the best model of social care for our families and communities is a national issue, because how we care with and for our ageing population matters to everyone across the country. It’s complex and it’s complicated, and it matters so much that a national government report and a commitment to legislation to change how we invest in social care are in place. We in Glasgow can be at the leading edge of this change, influencing by example.

Thirdly, and crucially, we’ve been listening and learning from organisations and groups who support and represent people across our city with lived experience, so that we can understand more about what matters to them and what good support means to them.   

Again, this isn’t new because we continually consult and engage with the people who use and are supported by our services.  But we want the type of conversation to be different in future – focussing on all the assets and strengths that people and communities already have instead of focussing on a set list of services that the statutory sector has traditionally provided.   

For example, where we’ve previously asked ‘what’s the matter with you and how can our services fix it?’ we’ll be asking ‘what matters to you, and how can we best support you to achieve your goals’, recognising that a statutory social work service or intervention isn’t always the answer.  

An everyday example of this would be linking someone who loves the outdoors into a local walking group with the support that they need, where they can build relationships and confidence and reduce isolation, instead of a more traditional approach such as collecting them in a bus to go to a day centre each week. 

Another example is how landlords are supporting their tenants through regular contact and practical help so that people can live independently at home in their community.  Queen’s Cross Housing Association has an older people’s wellbeing service that helps people manage their tenancy if age-related health and mobility concerns reduce their confidence. This can include helping arrange repairs or adaptations, accessing money and benefits advice, providing updates about events and activities or getting help from other services. 

Their Intervention Service provides tailored support when someone is unwell, providing assistance until they recover or longer-term arrangements can be made. So, if someone is very ill and has no-one to help, they can support them after a fall, dealing with a hospital stay and when they’re discharged. They can also collect people to help them home from hospital, settle them in, get shopping and prepare food.

We can also use digital technology in people’s homes to help keep them safe, reduce social isolation and support their independence. Being connected also helps to develop a shared, neighbourhood response among local care providers – potentially sharing responsibilities to respond quickly to someone at home when the need arises. Digital sensors can help monitor things like movements around the home and building conditions, and raise alerts if needed. 

So, what’s next? Our conversations with people who we support are ongoing. We know we’ve got a lot more to talk and hear about so that we truly build what we do around what matters to people.  

We’ve already heard about some fantastic care, and we’ve also heard where we can do more. For example, we heard that even the language we use matters more than we may always be aware of. It can feel as though it’s labelling or describing people by medical conditions or circumstances, especially focussing on where there are deficits rather than assets, and our choice of language can create barriers when we use jargon that excludes people. Even the title ‘Maximising Independence’ could change if it doesn’t effectively communicate our messages with the people who we want to hear them.

So, we’ll continue to have more and deeper conversations to listen and work through how we implement what we hear in our day-to-day ways of working.

Our HSCP’s Chief Officer Susanne Millar commented: “Each and every one of us will have personal experience of how care and support can transform lives for the better, whether personally or through the work that we do. Our experiences will all be different, but they will all share some common factors – kindness, compassion, listening closely and working together with others at an early stage to reach a positive outcome and prevent a crisis further down the line.  

“Maximising Independence won’t happen overnight – it’s a generational change - but the change has already begun. And, in the same way that we made The Promise to care for Glasgow’s children and young people, I’m confident that Maximising Independence will help us to create a health and social care system that cares with and for the people of Glasgow now and in the future.”

For More Information

We’ll be sharing information about progress regularly, and in the meantime, if you have any comments or questions, please contact us at MaximisingIPT@glasgow.gov.uk.