Care Together Prevention Model Review
Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) faced rising demand and financial pressures in adult social care, spurred by increasing costs, an ageing population, and complex needs. 31ten was commissioned to review the Care Together programme, an asset-based preventative initiative for older people. The review aimed to diagnose effective and ineffective practices and recommend how the programme could evolve and scale into a place-based commissioning and operational model for Adult Social Care services. The objectives were to strengthen preventative offers in the community, prevent, reduce, and delay demand for ASC, and improve service quality and use. Our review aimed to identify how resources could be best allocated to reduce demand for more costly interventions and to co-design a revitalised approach to build on successes to date.
The Role
31ten supported CCC in reviewing and strengthening the Care Together programme, ensuring that place-based commissioning and delivery were optimised for improved outcomes and financial sustainability. Our work focused on:
- Developing a place-based commissioning model – We explored how ASC operational and commissioning functions could be better structured around locality level footprints, recognising the potential for more locally responsive and integrated service delivery.
- Strengthening prevention to reduce demand – We identified ways to enhance preventative services, helping to prevent, reduce, and delay the need for statutory ASC interventions while ensuring better outcomes for service users.
- Enhancing co-production and engagement – We engaged with local stakeholders including Community Micro Enterprises, District Councils and those with lived experience to understand how services were being co-designed with communities and the impact of seed-funded initiatives.
- Aligning ASC commissioning and operations with public health, and community teams – We demonstrated how closer collaboration across these functions could improve service effectiveness, reduce fragmentation and duplication and meet complex needs in a more integrated way delivering more while delivering efficiencies.
- Delivering efficiencies and value for money – Our recommendations set out how the Care Together model could support financial efficiencies through reducing long-term care needs and sustaining people to live independently while maintaining high-quality care and support in local communities. This included options for reinvesting savings into prevention and community-based care models.
Key Outcomes
Our work to create the new delivery model identified potential efficiencies of over £1.1m while embedding the Care Together function as well as a clear pathway for implementation which CCC are in the process of taking forward to be in place for the next financial year. We also modelled targeted investment in Early Intervention and Prevention as an investment to save opportunity drawing on national evidence.
“31ten delivered a comprehensive and well-presented set of recommendations to us which fully reflected the brief we'd given. It was a pleasure working with Laura and the team as they were flexible, responsive and quick to navigate the complexities of our delivery environment. I would recommend them to others seeking credible and capable public sector consultancy support.”
Jo Melvin
Strategic Lead – Adult Social Care Commissioning, Cambridgeshire County Council
