“We understand we need to do things differently,” Sally Shaw Head of Orkney Health and Care

This week sees the start of some taster sessions delivered by NDTicentral .The sessions jointly funded by Orkney Health & Care (OH&C) and the Scottish Patient Safety Programme are taking place across Orkney as introductions to #CommunityLedSupport.

The sessions are led by Brian Frisby a retired social worker with Derby City Council. The taster sessions are just short snippets of activities to get people thinking about working together to enable the way we deliver social care in Orkney  to embrace change.

Senior managers at Orkney Health and Care have assured contributors that they are committed to change and to accepting the proposals which will eventually emerge from the programme of change.

At the end of June NDTicentral will run a series of workshops where people will come together to design the service –  together. This will involve a wide range of people: those directly working in social care, the voluntary sector, the emergency services,trade unions, community groups and members of the public.

It was unfortunate that the session in the Milestone Church, Dounby on Monday 27th of May was attended by merely a handful of members of the community. It was mostly made up of employees of Orkney Health & Care and included the local councillor Rachael King, Chair of Orkney Health & Care Committee and therefore these were the people leading the discussions. Community Led Support, building change together, will only work if actual members of the public get actively involved.

There are several taster sessions still to be held, if you are interested:

• Kirkwall in Room 2 at Kirkwall Town Hall and Community Centre on Tuesday 28 May from 10:00 – 11:30 and 12:00 – 13:30.
• Deerness at the Community Centre on Tuesday 28 May from 15:30 – 17:00.
• St Margaret’s Hope at the Cromarty Hall on Tuesday 28 May from 18:00 – 19:30

One of the ideas is to have a pop-up Community Hub where people come together to discuss care needs rather than an individual  home visit and assessment by a manager from OH&C. If the hub idea is taken up it would firstly be as a pilot in one local area to determine if it would work or not.

It is very easy to be cynical about public services involving members of the community in planning change but this is a genuine attempt by OH&C to improve their service.

Orkney, like many parts of Scotland, has an ageing demographic so demands on a social care system will only increase. There is a serious issue with the recruitment and retention of social care staff. This problem is made worse  by limits on migration and the loss of EU nationals due to Brexit which Scotland has no control over.

Social Care will change – influencing the future successful design of social care in the islands relies on the active participation of the public making their views and expectations known.

Reporter: Fiona Grahame