Your views on information and advice services

Overview

We currently spend around £1m each day on adult social

services and are planning to increase the overall amount we

spend on adult social services in 2017/18.   However, the

demands on adult social care continue to change so even with

the investment we are making in services we still have savings

to find if we are to continue to meet people's care needs.

Those who do receive support from the Council often need

complex care package delivered in their own homes, to support

and maintain their quality of life.  We have to get the right

balance between spending money on people’s existing care

needs and spending money that helps people live well and

independently in the community.

We want to focus the budget that we have on services and

support for the wider community and develop a more inclusive

approach that helps people to access services in their

communities.  This support helps delay, or even prevent people

from needing formal care services in the future.

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Information and advice services are crucial to our policy of

helping people to remain independent.  Receiving information

at the right time helps prevent people needing formal social

care services at a later date.  We want to review these services

so that we can target them more effectively at preventing

people from needing further care.

Why we are consultingWe were already looking at information and advice services

and starting to think how we could look at these services

together.  Although this work was already in progress we now

need to take an urgent look at how these services work

because of the need to make savings to our adult social care

budget.

We are engaging with people who use our services, carers,

providers and partner organisations to help work out how best

to provide information and advice services.

We want to find out more about what people value about

information and advice services and hear what ideas people

have about how we can work differently to help people get the

information and advice they need early on whilst making the

money we spend go further.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our Adult

Social Care committee as part of the evidence they will use to

help them come to a decision about future services.2

Find out more and have your say online by filling in the

feedback form below.

If you need a copy of this consultation document in a different

format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk

Background informationWe currently spend over £1.7m on information, advice and

advocacy services.

In 2008 we undertook a paper and online survey about

information and advice which included asking older people their

experiences of trying to find information and advice.

In 2010 the County Council worked with Norfolk Older People’s

Forum to implement its plan for accessible information and

advice. This and successive versions of the plan have

contributed to the Norfolk approach to providing information

and advice for older people.

In 2012 we undertook consultation with people who might need

information and advice, carers, social care staff, provider

organisations and community groups to help develop our

current model for specialist information and advice.

In 2014-15 a further consultation took place.  We used the

findings to help us continue our current specialist and general

information and advice services.

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We now want to look at the money we have to spend on

information and advice services and see how we can best work

with partners and organisations that provide services to make

information and advice easier to access.

Please note:  By law we have to provide advocacy services.

We are currently looking for an organisation to provide our

advocacy services.  We have already agreed a reduced budget

for these as we think we can make savings through developing

a different way of delivering these services.  We are therefore

not consulting on advocacy services as part of these proposals.

What we do at the momentHere are some details about our current information and advice

services.

1. Specialist Information and Advice for people with disabilities,

long term conditions and support needs.

These services work together in partnership across Norfolk to

offer specialist advice, to share resources and to make sure

that people can receive information and advice from the

organisation best placed to meet their needs.  One of the main

aims of using a partnership approach to provide information

and advice was to maintain the knowledge and expertise in

particular areas related to disabilities.  All of the organisations

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in the partnership provide information and advice in the

following areas:

Debt including fuel and water

Welfare rights including complex benefits advice and

support to challenge decisions

Social care including payment for care and support

Support to access a wide range of help

Health issues

Legal issues including protection from abuse

Support for carers

Advocacy

The following services make up the partnership for specialist

information and advice:

Partnership Lead - this makes sure that all of the services are

working well together to provide comprehensive information

and advice for customers.

Information and Advice Service for Older People - this gives

expert advice on benefits and pensions for older people,

Lasting Power of Attorney, living independently and getting

care. This service includes Money Matters practical support for

older people who need help to manage their financial affairs

and have nobody to do this safely for them. This service is

partly funded by the NHS.

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Advice and Support Service for People with Dementia - This service provides advice and support to people

with dementia and their families and other carers. This includes

information in respect of people recently diagnosed or

concerned they may have dementia and help and support for

people with more complex needs. This includes education and

peer support for carers.   This service is partly funded by the

NHS.

Information and Advice Service for People who are Deaf - The focus of this service is to provide information, advice

and advocacy principally through sign language on all aspects

of living independently. This includes advising Deaf people to

overcome barriers to accessing mainstream provision such as

education, GPs and other appointments.

The Information and Advice Service for People with

Disabilities supports the other services with the provision of

advice and training on complex welfare rights (including

disability benefits).  It offers a complex casework and

representation service.  It offers a welfare rights services for

people with support needs who are not the target for other

advice services including people who have been homeless,

people who have experienced domestic abuse, Gypsies and

Travellers, refugees and migrant workers.  This service

includes Money Matters practical support for younger people

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with disabilities who need help to manage their financial affairs

and have nobody to do this safely for them.

Information and Advice Service for People with Mental Health Problems.  The priority for this service is to provide

information and advice to help people with mental health

problems to maximise their health and wellbeing and to

promote social inclusion. Areas covered include mental illness,

its treatment, support to maintain engagement with services, to

challenge treatment decisions where necessary, challenging

discrimination in employment.  This service is partly funded by

the NHS.

Information and Advice Service for People with Learning Difficulties.  The service works in close partnership with

people with learning difficulties developing their abilities and

self –advocacy skills to participate fully in routine aspects of

daily life such as meeting their own health care needs, holding

a tenancy, following their interests and citizenship rights.  The

service uses training and group advocacy to support people to

overcome barriers to participation.

2. Information, Advice and Support Service for People with

Personal Budgets

This service enables people to manage personal budgets and

direct payments. The priorities include:

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Enabling people to make informed choices

Advice and information to help the development of support

plans

Developing options to support in the areas of employment

and payroll of personal carers and monitoring of direct

payment accounts

3. Generalist advice

We also commission general advice services.  The main

priorities for these services are the provision of information and

advice to enable people to:

Manage household finances, reduce and manage

personal debt;

Increase household income by securing employment or

claiming benefit entitlement;

Prevent homelessness and/or address other housing

problems;

Understand and enforce their employment rights;

Understand their immigration rights;

Understand their rights and the support available in

respect of personal and family issues (such as relationship

break down, domestic abuse or the local arrangements

around social care assessment);

Understand consumer rights;

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Improve knowledge and skills prevent problems occurring

or reoccurring and to be aware of the high quality, up to

date web-based information available to them for self-

help.

Things to think aboutInformation and advice services are crucial to our policy of

helping people to remain independent.  Receiving information

at the right time helps prevent people needing formal social

care services at a later date.  We want to review these services

so that we can target them more effectively at preventing

people from needing further care.

We have already began to explore how we could use

information services to promote independence.  It could be that

we link our customer services more closely with information

and advice, so that it's the first service people get from us

before we look at other support that's available.

We also want to explore whether specialist information and

advice services are the right way forward, or whether a single

point of access or hub approach might be more effective and

easier for people to get the information they need.  

Given that our work is now based in local communities we want

to think about how to provide the best information and advice

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about the help people can find in their local areas.  We may

also have different priorities and needs that we have to meet.

There are also some areas where they may be duplication of

services.   For example, many of our housing related support

services offer information and advice.  There is also a

significant overlap between advice offered to carers through the

information and advice services and through our carers’

service.  That's why we don't want to look at services or

individual contracts in isolation but look across them as a

whole.  This will enable us to be more creative and flexible

about the services we offer people.

Although this work was already in progress we now need to

take an urgent look at how these services work because of the

need to make savings to our adults social care budget.

What this means for people who currently use these servicesOur proposal to review services and reduce the amount of

money we spend on them means that services will change.  

Instead of receiving information from a specialist service,

people may get information from a service that is open to

everyone.  If that is the case we would make sure that the

service was accessible for disabled people, people with

sensory disabilities and people with learning disabilities.

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People might receive information at a different place.  For

example, there may be more information and advice on wider

issues available at GPs surgeries.  There may be more

information services available locally.

People may also have to access information and advice in

different ways.  We may have to use the internet in smarter

ways and help people access the information they need

themselves.

If, as a result of this consultation, we change things for service

users we will work with providers to understand how best to

enable people to get the information and advice they need.

This could be by helping point people to other sources of

information and advice or giving people support to access

information in different ways.

As well as impacting on people who use services, reducing our

spend on these services could impact on the organisations who

provide them and the staff working for them.

This might also impact on health needs.  If any future service

doesn't work and people then can't easily access information

that helps them manage long term conditions and prevent their

health becoming worse then we may have more people turning

up to see a doctor or using A&E services.

Your views on information and advice services

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We are proposing to simplify the way that people access

services.  Currently services are targeted to specific groups of

people with many access points.  We think we can streamline

these services whilst also making it easier for people to get the

advice, information and advocacy they need.

We are proposing to reduce the money we spend on

information and advice by £63,000 in 2017/18 and by at least

£188,000 in 2018/19.  This would mean we would still be

spending over £1.5m each year on information, advice and

advocacy.

We will work with organisations that currently provide services,

our partners, other stakeholders and people who use

information and advice services to develop our new approach.

We are planning one-to-one meetings with organisations that

provide services and workshops with providers, partners and

service users to help us design our new service.

In particular we are keen to find out what the strengths are of

our current approach, what works well at the moment and how

people would like to receive information and advice in the

future.  We are also keen to hear good ideas for how we can

work better with other organisations. 

We are also keen to hear ideas and suggestions from others,

so this consultation is also open to anyone else who is

interested or has a view to share.12

1. What do you value most about information and advice services and why? Please write in space below:

2.H

ow can we best make information and advice services easier for people to access in the future? Please write in space below:

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3. If you have any ideas how we can work with others to make sure people have information, advice and support in different ways, please write them in space below:

4. If there is anything else that you think we need to consider about information and advice, please write in space below:

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5. Here is a list of different relationships people have with this service. Please select all that apply to you:

I currently use information and advice services

I have used information and advice services in the past

I care for someone who currently uses information and advice services

I care for someone who has used information and advice services in the past

I work for an information and advice service

I refer my clients to information and advice services

Other (please write in space below)

About youPersonal information, confidentiality and data protection

We will process any personal information we receive from you in line with the Data Protection Act 1998.  This means that Norfolk County Council will hold your personal data and only use it for the purpose for which it was collected, being this consultation.  We use this information to see how representative the feedback is of Norfolk’s population.  We also use it to see if any particular groups of people are especially affected by our proposals.  Under our record management policy we will keep this information for five years.

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We will also, under normal circumstances, not pass your personal data on to anyone else.  However, we may be asked under access to information laws to publish or disclose some, or all, of the information you provide in response to this consultation, including any personal information.  We will only do this where such disclosure will comply with such relevant information laws which include the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

6. Are you responding as...?

Please select only one item

An individual / member of the public

A family

On behalf of a voluntary or community group

On behalf of a statutory organisation

On behalf of a business

A Norfolk County Councillor

A district or borough councillor

A town or parish councillor

A Norfolk County Council employee

7. If you are responding on behalf of another organisation, what is the name of the organisation, group or business?Please write your answer here:

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8. Are you...?

Please select only one item

Male

Female

Prefer to self-describe (please specify below)

Prefer not to say

If you prefer to self-describe please specify here:

9. How old are you?

Please select only one item

0-15

16-29

30-44

45-64

65-84

85+

Prefer not to say

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10. Do you have any long-term illness, disability or health problem that limits your daily activities or the work you can do?

Please select only one item

Yes

No

Prefer not to say

11. How would you describe your ethnic background? Please select one only

Please select only one item

White British

White Irish

White other

Mixed

Asian or Asian British

Black or Black British

Chinese

Prefer not to say

Other ethnic background - please describe below

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12. What is your first language?

Please write your answer here:

13. What is the first part of your postcode? (e.g. NR4)

Please write your answer here:

How we will make our decision and report back to youOur county councillors will consider the consultation responses

we receive very carefully.  In particular, they will take into

account:

• The impact of any proposal on individuals, groups or

communities and in particular on people identified as having

'protected characteristics' under the Equality Act 2010. The

protected characteristics are: age; disability; gender

reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief;

sex; and sexual orientation.  As well as this equality impact

assessment, councillors will consider the impact of proposals

on rural areas

• The views of people and stakeholders consulted

• The evidence of need and what is proven to work effectively

and well19

• The financial and legal positions and any constraints at the

time

• Any potential alternative options, models or ideas for making

the savings.

Your opinions are valuable to us. Thank you for taking the time

to read this document and respond.

Please note Paper responses to this consultation can be sent

to: In writing to Freepost Plus RTCL-XSTT-JZSK, Norfolk

County Council, Ground floor - south wing, County Hall,

Martineau Lane, Norwich NR1 2DH.

However, if you want to help the council save money please

use a stamp and send to this address: Stakeholder and

Consultation Team, Norfolk County Council, Ground floor -

south wing, County Hall, Martineau Lane, NR1 2DH

Your opinions are valuable to us. Thank you for taking the time to read this document and respond.

If you need this document in large print, audio,

Braille, alternative format or in a different

language please contact us on: 0344 800 8020

Email: haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk and we

will do our best to help

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October 2016

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