Funding boost for social care innovation
Julia Lopez MP has welcomed the news that health commissioners in North East London will receive over £2.5m to support innovation and scaling in adult social care.
The North East London Integrated Care System, which is responsible for commissioning health services in Havering, will benefit from two government funds to help people live independently for longer, avoid hospital admissions and help increase the amount of effective types of support for care recipients.
North East London ICS will receive £565,963 in 2023/24 to increase the availability of Shared Lives arrangements to support more people to live independently. The funding will also be used to help identify and support carers within, and beyond, acute settings and introduce technology to support carers to manage and maintain their caring role.
This is also one of the four projects that has been awarded funding from the second rollout of the Adult Social Care Technology Fund, which was announced in October 2023. The Adult Social Care Technology Fund was created to help local systems test, evaluate and scale care technologies that have been shown to improve the quality and safety of care, reduce avoidable hospital admissions and help people live independently for longer. North East London ICS will receive £2,080,157 from this fund to roll out a range of care technologies to explore and demonstrate the impact of personalised digital care technologies on people, care provider efficiency and the wider health and care system.
Julia Lopez, Member of Parliament for Hornchurch & Upminster, said:
‘As people go on to live longer lives it is important that they are provided proper support to do so as fully and independently as possible.
From my discussions with executives at Queen’s Hospital, it is clear that helping our elderly residents to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions is key to this and has been a focus of much of their work to expand their virtual wards. This funding will help reinforce these efforts and comes as progress continues on the St George's Health and Wellbeing Hub, where a new model of integrated health and social care will be pioneered and local residents will be able to access blood tests and scans locally.’
